This past Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin pushed through an order to raise his nuclear deterrent forces to a more elevated alertness level, whining about “aggressive statement” from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a sweeping array of heavy sanctions targeting his regime.
While on the heels of the fourth full day of Russia’s insane invasion into its neighbor, Ukraine, Putin stated, “Western countries aren’t only taking unfriendly actions against our country in the economic sphere, but top officials from leading NATO members made aggressive statements regarding our country.”
Fox News reported:
Putin ordered the Russian defense minister and the chief of the military’s General Staff to put the nuclear deterrent forces in a “special regime of combat duty.” The move signals tensions could boil over into a nuclear war.
“He is right now threatening a nuclear escalation,” said former DIA intelligence officer Rebekah Koffler. “This a veiled threat – or maybe such a veiled threat – he just met with his chief of general staff and minister of defense. He is escalating the conflict into the nuclear domain in order to de-escalate – that is topple Kyiv’s regime quickly.”
This decision from Putin to increase the level of alertness has prompted his forces to ready their nuclear weaponry for a possible launch. This is the second time in the past few days that the Russian President has put forth thinly-veiled, or just outright, threats of possible nuclear escalation. In the wake of the invasion beginning, Putin issued a warning that “consequences you have never seen” would be slammed down against anyone who tried to go against Russia’s actions.
Linda Thomas Greenfield, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), issued their response to these latest statements from Russia as part of an appearance on the Sunday morning segment of CBS’ “Face the Nation,” stated “It means that President Putin is continuing to escalate this war in a manner that is totally unacceptable and we have to continue to stem his actions in the strongest possible way.”
Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary-General, gave their own concurrent statement while on CNN, stating, “This is dangerous rhetoric. This is behavior which is irresponsible. That’s the reason why we both provide support to Ukraine but also why we over the last weeks and months have significantly increased the presence of NATO in the eastern part of the alliance.”
As a result of Russia starting its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the United States, along with quite a few other allied nations, have been slamming serious sanctions on the Russian financial sector, going so far as to toss out several Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).
The group of allied nations have also given their own collective statement in condemnation of Russia’s choices and actions and making a commitment to stand with Ukraine: “We stand with the Ukrainian people in this dark hour. Even beyond the measures we are announcing today, we are prepared to take further measures to hold Russia to account for its attack on Ukraine.”