Putin wields his nuclear force and agrees to negotiate with Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin today wielded his nuclear power in the face of a downpour of Western sanctions and “aggressive statements” by NATO leaders while agreeing to start negotiations with Ukraine, on the fourth day of the “special military operation” which launched in that country.

“The highest officials of the main NATO countries allow themselves aggressive statements against our country, that is why I order the Minister of Defense and the Chief of the General Staff to put the deterrent forces of the Russian Army in a special service regime”, Putin said.

The president issued this directive with a stern frown in a meeting with the Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, and the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Valeri Guerásimov, according to images broadcast on state television.

Russia’s deterrence forces comprise nuclear strategies, including intercontinental missiles, as well as non-nuclear forces, anti-missile defense, early warning system, and anti-aircraft defense.

A CRYPTIC LANGUAGE

Putin did not specify what the “special service regime” consists of, but it was immediately interpreted by the West as a warning of the country’s nuclear potential.

“Irresponsible behavior”, “dangerous rhetoric”, with these words NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg described the Kremlin chief’s announcement.

He added that to this is added what “the Russians are doing on the ground in Ukraine, launching a war against an independent sovereign nation. This adds seriousness to the situation.”

From Washington, they accused the Russian president of continuing his tactic of “manufacturing threats” to “justify aggression”.

In broadcast footage of the meeting with Shoigu and Gerasimov, Putin spoke of “illegitimate Western sanctions” but made no reference to his “special military operation,” as he calls the invasion.

RUSSIA ADMITS CASES

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defense recognized for the first time in four days of the war the existence of casualties in the ranks of the Army

“Unfortunately we have dead and wounded comrades,” Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashénkov told a news conference, without specifying their number.

Noting that Russian losses are “considerably less than the number of killed nationalists or casualties in the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the military spokesman admitted the “existence of prisoners of war captured by Ukrainian forces.”

According to Kiev, the fatalities of the Russians in four days of war amount to between 2,800 and 3,000 while their own total 198, all figures impossible to contrast.

NEGOTIATIONS AT THE BORDER

In this situation, Russia and Ukraine agreed to hold negotiations at the Aleksandrovka-Vilcha checkpoint, on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, next to the “exclusion zone” created around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after the 1986 accident.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky explained that he agreed to negotiate “so that later not a single citizen of Ukraine will have the slightest doubt” that he did not try to stop the war, “when there was a small, but still a chance.”

His foreign minister, Dmitro Kuleba, warned that his country is not going to “capitulate or surrender an inch of territory.”

“We are going to listen to what Russia wants to say (…) and to say what we think about this war,” said the head of Ukrainian diplomacy at a press conference on the talks that will be held with Russia on the Ukrainian-Belarussian border.

He added that when Russia launched the invasion last Thursday, it did not want negotiations and now when it sees that its “blitzkrieg” plan has failed and it suffers losses due to Ukraine’s resistance, it wants to negotiate.

“This for us is already a victory,” said Kuleba, who stressed that the negotiations in no case mean that the Ukrainian armed forces will stop fighting the Russian troops that entered its territory.