Putin ups the ante as Ukraine peace talks agreed
President Putin has ordered his military command to put nuclear deterrent forces on a “special” state of alert, as Kyiv and Moscow agree to hold peace talks and Russian forces continue to meet fierce resistance across Ukraine, writes Mattie Brignal.
Putin’s sabre-rattling, which follows a thinly veiled threat of nuclear annihilation in his speech on Thursday, was, he said, in response to “aggressive statements” by NATO members against Moscow.
It doesn’t mean Putin wants to use his nukes – he knows NATO has enough to obliterate Russia. But it’s a way of making the West think twice about upping its support for Ukraine and sowing doubt about where Putin’s red line is.
Even so, it’s a significant escalation, and the risk from miscalculation is now enormous. As the BBC’s John Simpson put it: “Putin puts his nuclear forces on high alert. This is the kind of moment we’ve feared almost my entire life. And why is he doing it? Because his wholly unnecessary invasion of Ukraine doesn’t seem to be going to plan.”
And as the hours go by it’s becoming clearer that, even if the Russian advance hasn’t stalled, it’s being frustrated by a heroic resistance. Ukrainian forces have regained full control of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, after street fighting with Russian troops, according to the city’s mayor. Authorities in the port city of Odessa said they had prevented a Russian attempt to land troops overnight. Kyiv is subject to a city-wide curfew and is coming under heavy aerial and artillery bombardment.
Talks about talks crystallised today after a phone call between Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Belarus’s President Lukashenko. The two men agreed that delegations from Kyiv and Moscow would meet at the Ukraine-Belarus border, “without preconditions”. Lukashenko said he would ensure the Ukrainian delegation’s safe passage by grounding flights in the area. No time or date was mentioned. It’s impossible to say what form any settlement would take.
The backdrop to all this has been a toughening of Western sanctions on Russia. In a dramatic rewriting of German foreign policy, the formerly dovish Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced today an immediate hike of defence spending of €100bn and of year-on-year spending by a third to 2% of GDP. The speech was greeted with a standing ovation in the Bundestag as crowds lined the streets of Berlin to protest the war. Scholz said: “With the invasion of Ukraine, we are now in a new era.”
It comes hours after Berlin dropped its block on the export of German-made lethal weapons to Ukraine via third countries, upending decades of tight controls.
The EU said today it would ban all Russian flights from European airspace and finance the purchase and delivery of weapons to Ukraine.
BP has said it will sell its 19.75% stake in the Kremlin oil giant Rosneft, after pressure from the British government.
And after weeks of discussions, the UK, US and EU agreed on Saturday night to kick Russia out of the SWIFT international payment system after Germany and Italy withdrew their opposition.
We have more analysis on Reaction, below, including Iain Martin’s weekly newsletter, drawing together the strands of the war and the repercussions for UK energy policy.
Twitter: @mattiebrignal