Following high tensions with the West over Ukraine Vladimir Putin ordered for “Russia’s nuclear deterrent forces to be put on high alert” on Sunday afternoon.
Putin said, “Western countries aren’t only taking unfriendly economic actions against our country, but leaders of major NATO countries are making aggressive statements about our country.
“So I order to move Russia’s deterrence forces to a special regime of duty.”
On Monday the Interfax news agency reported that Russia’s Defence Ministry said their strategic missile forces and Northern and Pacific fleets had been placed on “enhanced combat duty.”
It added that this was in line with an order from President Putin.
Defence minister Sergei Shoigu told the Russian President that “shifts on duty at the command posts of the Strategic Missile Forces, the Northern and Pacific Fleets, and the Long-Range Aviation Command began to carry out combat duty with reinforced personnel,” Interfax quoted the Ministry as saying.
The British Commons Defence Committee chairman Tobias Ellwood MP has warned on Sunday that Vladimir Putin could, in the “worst-case scenario” could launch low yield tactical nuclear weapons if his forces fail to enter the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
The Russian President wants to own the Ukraine and wants to rebuild the former USSR, if he does not get his way then he could use nukes over essentially what is a piece of land.
Western officials have previously raised the alarm that the Russians could use “thermobaric vacuum bombs” which suck in oxygen to create a devastating, high temperature blast as they have been seen in Ukraine.
Ellwood who is also a former British Army officer said Western allies needed to think now what their response would be if Putin were to use unconventional nuclear forces.
“He could certainly use other weapons systems which haven’t been really tested or that we aren’t really used to,” he warned the BBC.
“Chemical weapons, the worst case scenario would be low yield tactical nuclear weapons as well. We need to ask those questions as to what we would do.”
Putin threatened Ukraine on Sunday with a chilling message with a ‘final solution’ and he will be remembered as ‘Adolf Hitler of the current century’
