President Vladimir Putin put Russia’s nuclear deterrent on high alert on Sunday in the face of a barrage of Western reprisals for his war on Ukraine, which said it had repelled Russian ground forces attacking its biggest cities.
The United States said Putin was escalating the war in a “totally unacceptable” way, amid signs that the biggest assault on a European state since World War Two was not producing rapid battlefield victories, but instead generating a far-reaching and concerted Western response.
The Ukrainian president’s office said negotiations with Moscow without preconditions would be held at the Belarusian-Ukrainian border.
“I do not really believe in the outcome of this meeting, but let them try, so that later not a single citizen of Ukraine has any doubt that I, as president, tried to stop the war,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
The Kremlin said talks had started.
As missiles fell on Ukrainian cities, nearly 400,000 Ukrainian civilians, mainly women and children, have fled into neighbouring countries. Hundreds were stranded in Kyiv on Sunday waiting for trains to take them west, away from the fighting.
The capital remained in Ukrainian government hands, with Zelenskiy rallying his people daily despite Russian shelling of civilian infrastructure.
The World Health Organization said medical oxygen was running low. But a doctor said a blood bank where donors had come under fire on Saturday was again packed.
Only three days after it started, the invasion has triggered a Western political, strategic, economic and corporate response unprecedented in its extent and coordination.
The 27-nation European Union decided for the first time in its history to supply weapons to a country at war, and a source told Reuters it would send 450 million euros ($507 million) of weaponry to its eastern neighbour.
It also shut all Russian planes out of its airspace, as did Canada, and banned the Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik.
Germany, which had already frozen a planned undersea gas pipeline from Russia, said it would increase defence spending massively, casting off decades of reluctance to match its economic power with military clout
British oil major BP announced it would give up its 19.75% stake in Russian oil giant Rosneft (ROSN.MM), writing off up to $25 billion.
World Bank President David Malpass said the Group of Seven economies would discuss Ukraine on Tuesday, and that the bank may be able to provide Ukraine with financial aid in days.
‘NOT DETERRENCE BUT THREAT’
But Putin, who has called the invasion a “special operation”, thrust an alarming new element into play when he ordered Russia’s “deterrence forces” – which wield nuclear weapons – onto high alert.
