Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to put Russia’s strategic deterrence forces on “special alert” is part of Moscow’s recurring scheme to fabricate threats to justify aggression, White House press secretary Jen Saki said, AFP and Reuters reported.
“This is a recurring pattern that we have seen with President Putin during this conflict of fabricating non-existent threats to justify continued aggression,” Saki said. “Russia has never been threatened by NATO and Ukraine,” she added.
“This is all part of Putin’s scheme, and we will counteract this,” she said. “We have the ability to protect ourselves, but we need to draw attention to what we see what President Putin is doing,” she said.
Saki noted that Washington is ready to provide Ukraine with additional assistance and has not abandoned sanctions against Russian energy. “We want to do this by making sure we minimize the impact on the global market and do it in a unified way,” she said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, in turn, called at a press conference the decision to transfer the Russian strategic deterrence forces to “special combat duty” as an attempt by Moscow to put pressure on the upcoming negotiations. He said that Moscow abandoned its preconditions after the military setbacks.
“We will not surrender, we will not capitulate, we will not give up an inch of our territory,” the head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry assured at a press conference.