KYIV: Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his defence chiefs to put the country’s nuclear “deterrence forces” on high alert Sunday and accused the West of taking “unfriendly” steps against his country.
International tensions are already soaring over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Putin’s order will cause further alarm.
Moscow has the world’s second-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons and a huge cache of ballistic missiles which form the backbone of the country’s deterrence forces.
“I order the defence minister and the chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces to put the deterrence forces of the Russian army into a special mode of combat service,” Putin said.
“You see that Western countries are not only unfriendly to our country in the economic sphere—I mean illegitimate sanctions,” he added, in a televised address.
“Senior officials of leading NATO countries also allow aggressive statements against our country.”
Defence Minister Shoigu replied: “Affirmative.”
Ukrainian forces secured full control of Kharkiv on Sunday following street fighting with Russian troops in the country’s second biggest city, the local governor said.
“Kharkiv is fully under our control,” the head of the regional administration, Oleg Sinegubov, said on messaging app Telegram, adding that the army was expelling Russian forces during a “clean-up” operation.
Earlier Sunday he had said that Russian forces’ light vehicles broke into the city, with fighting breaking out in the streets.
An AFP correspondent in the city heard machine gun fire and explosions.
Sinegubov said that Russian troops were “absolutely demoralised”.
He said Russian forces were abandoning their vehicles “in the middle of the road” and groups of five were surrendering to the Ukrainian army.
“As soon as they see at least one representative of the armed forces, they surrender,” Sinegubov said.
He said that “dozens” of Russian soldiers have already surrendered.
“The captured Russian fighters speak of complete exhaustion and demoralisation, they have no connection with the central command, they do not understand and do not know what they do next,” the Kharkiv governor said.
“Since the beginning of the attack on Ukraine, they have not received food and water,” he added.
“Leaving the positions, Russian fighters are trying to hide among the civilian population, asking people for clothes and food.”
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that he was ready for talks with Russia, but rejected Moscow’s push to stage them in Belarus as it was a launchpad for invading forces.
“Warsaw, Bratislava, Budapest, Istanbul, Baku. We proposed all of them,” Zelensky said in an address posted online.
“And any other city in a country from whose territory missiles do not fly would suit us,” the 44-year-old president said.
“That’s the only way talks can be honest. And could put an end to war.”
Zelensky’s address came as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies that Moscow was prepared for talks and had dispatched a delegation to the Belarusian city of Gomel.
“We will be ready to begin these talks in Gomel,” Peskov said.
Moscow says Kyiv’s forces must surrender and the country should agree to become a “neutral” territory, conditions seen widely as unacceptable by Ukraine.
Russian ground forces have pressed into Ukraine from the north, east and south but have encountered fierce resistance from Ukrainian troops, the intensity of which has likely surprised Moscow, according to Western sources.
Putin on Sunday congratulated members of special forces, saying they fought “heroically” in Ukraine.
“Special gratitude to those who these days are heroically fulfilling their military duty in the course of a special operation to provide assistance to the people’s republics of Donbas,” Putin said in a televised address.
While fighting raged in Kharkiv, the city administration in Kyiv, 400 kilometres (250 miles) to the west, said the capital remained under the control of Ukrainian forces despite clashes with “sabotage groups”.
The Russian defence ministry claimed on Sunday that its troops had besieged the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson and the city of Berdyansk in the southeast.
“Over the past 24 hours, the cities of Kherson and Berdyansk have been completely blocked by the Russian armed forces,” defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.
He added that Russian troops had also taken control of Genichesk, a port city along the Sea of Azov, and an airfield near Kherson.
As of Sunday, the Russian army said it had destroyed 975 military facilities in Ukraine and shot down eight fighter jets, seven helicopters and 11 drones.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict could last a “number of years” and the world needs to be prepared for Moscow “to seek to use even worse weapons”, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss warned Sunday.
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