Putin threatens with his nuclear arsenal and Zelensky assures that he will negotiate “without giving up”

The President of Russia, Vladimir Putintoday put its nuclear forces on alert in the face of growing international opposition to its military invasion of Ukrainewhile Kiev announced that it agrees to negotiate with Russia “without giving up.”

Four days after the invasion began with troops and bombing, Ukrainian forces are currently holding out against Russian military might and international pressure against Moscow is increasing with sanctions and vetoes against Russian politicians, organizations, banks, planes, the media, oligarchs and athletes.

SIGHT: Putin puts his nuclear ‘deterrent forces’ on high alert after NATO announcement

But Russia today he also raised his threat by announcing that puts nuclear deterrent forces on “special duty regime”after the “aggressive declarations” of the main countries of the NATO in the last days.

The Atlantic Alliance described those words as “dangerous rhetoric” while the White House accused Russia of “manufacturing threats” to “justify greater aggression”, a “pattern of behavior” that it considers habitual in the Russian president.

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Jen Psaki, spokesperson for the US president, Joe Bidenin a television interview, remarked that “the global community and the American people should see it through this prism”, since “at no time has Russia been under threat from NATO or has Russia been under threat from Ukraine”.

The general secretary of the NATO, Jens Stoltenbergmatched: “If you combine this rhetoric with what the Russians are doing on the ground in Ukrainelaunching a war against an independent sovereign nation, this adds seriousness to the situation”.

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The strategic deterrence forces of Russia it is made up of nuclear forces, including intercontinental missiles, as well as non-nuclear forces, and anti-missile defense, the early warning system and anti-aircraft defense.

A Russian Yars RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile system and other military vehicles move through Red Square during a military parade on June 24, 2020. (ALEXANDER NEMENOV / AFP)

NEGOTIATION IN BELARUS

Today both countries announced that they will negotiate in Belarus, a firm ally of Moscow. Ukraine He has reported that he will do so unconditionally on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, along the Pripyat River, and that the Belarusian regime is responsible for the safety of the Ukrainian delegation.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmitro Kuleba, specified in any case that his country is not going to “capitulate or give up a flea from its territory”, but simply “listen to what Russia wants to say” and “say what we think of this war.”

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The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyexplained that he accepted this meeting “so that later not a single citizen of Ukraine will have the slightest doubt that I, as president, did not try to stop the war, when there was a small, but still an opportunity”, in a message in video posted on its official Telegram channel.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky. (AFP).

According to the Turkish government, which held telephone conversations with the foreign ministers of both governments, the meeting between the two delegations could take place tomorrow.

The meeting will be 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.

Nuclear warheads in the world. (AFP).

CASES ON BOTH SIDES

The war started on Thursday 24 has caused casualties on both sideswhich the Ukrainians place at 197 between military and civilians.

The Russian authorities have not quantified them but today, for the first time, the Ministry of Defense of Russia He acknowledged the existence of dead, wounded and prisoners during what he describes as the “special military operation” ordered by Putin in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian president today appealed to citizens of foreign countries friendly to Ukraine to come to the country to join the fight against Russian aggression, integrated into a kind of new international Legion.

The body of a Russian serviceman lies near destroyed Russian military vehicles on the roadside on the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine, on February 26, 2022. (SERGEY BOBOK / AFP)

ALREADY CLOSE TO 400,000 REFUGEES

The management of the huge flow of Ukrainian refugees that is already causing the war – which already totals 368,000 according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) – worries the neighboring countries of Ukraine and focused today an extraordinary meeting of the Ministers of the Interior of the European Union (EU).

The meeting is studying the possibility of activating, for the first time, the temporary protection directive, an exceptional option designed precisely for war situations.

The European Commissioner for the Interior, Ylva Johansson, said that “it would be the right moment” to use it “to give people who flee adequate protection and the possibility of staying in the EU.”

The instrument provides groups of people with “immediate and temporary protection”, for one year extendable to two, although it does not require the mandatory distribution of asylum seekers among all the countries of the European Union and Denmark does not participate in this system.

Ukrainian women and children cross the border from Ukraine to Poland. (JANEK SKARZYNSKI / AFP).

AIRSPACE CLOSURE AND SWIFT BLOCK

Another element of pressure that the international community is resorting to is the closure of the airspace for Russian planes and making the operations of its banks more and more difficult.

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, proposed this Sunday to prohibit the takeoff, landing and passage of any Russian plane in the airspace of the European Union and also to veto the broadcasts of the Russia Today and Sputnik networks in community territory.

Many countries have already announced the closure of their airspace to Russian aircraft, including Spain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. -, Romania, Slovenia, United Kingdom, Poland, Czech Republic and Bulgaria.

The EU also decided yesterday to paralyze the transactions of the Central Bank of Russia and the exclusion of several Russian banks from SWIFT, measures to which the United States and Japan have also joined.

Demonstrators crowd around the Victory Column and near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, to protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 27, 2022. (Impar ANDERSEN / AFP)

PROTESTS IN EUROPE

The invasion by Russia of an independent nation has generated citizen protests from the outset in many countries, especially in European capitals.

One of the largest was held today in Berlin, where several hundred thousand people, according to the police, demonstrated against the war in Ukraine, under the slogan “Stop the war. Peace for Ukraine and for all of Europe.”

SIGHT: Germany: at least 100,000 people demonstrate in Berlin in solidarity with Ukraine

The protesters demanded that the Russian government put an end to the attacks, withdraw from Ukraine and restore its territorial integrity, and asked the German government to keep the borders open for refugees.

The advance of Russian troops in Ukraine. (AFP).

Also in Prague, tens of thousands of people today showed their support for Ukraine in the center of Prague, in a new act of solidarity that recalled that of Thursday, after the first day of the invasion, and which was now joined by artists, businessmen, students, politicians and figures from local churches.

“It is necessary to stop Putin’s feet and we know that he understands nothing more than determination and force,” Prime Minister Petr Fiala said in his brief speech.

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Source: Elcomercio