Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threat a distraction, says Boris Johnson

Prime minister says Russian forces are experiencing ‘difficulties’

Boris Johnson has said Vladimir Putin’s announcement that he is putting Russia’s nuclear deterrent on high alert are a “distraction” from the “difficulties that the Russian forces are experiencing” in Ukraine.

Mr Putin said that Moscow’s nuclear forces are now on a “special regime of combat duty” in response to “aggressive statements” coming from Western powers and economic sanctions - an escalation branded “completely unacceptable” by the US.

However Mr Putin’s brinkmanship on Sunday was dismissed by Mr Johnson, who said his actions were more to do with the fact that Russian military forces were meeting with “more resistance than the Kremlin had bargained for”.

Mr Johnson also cast doubt on possible negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian delegations to try to resolve the crisis.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky agreed the two sides could meet on the Ukraine-Belarus border having initially rejected an offer of talks in Belarus.

However Mr Johnson said he had seen nothing to suggest that Mr Putin was genuine in his offer.

“There’s nothing I’ve seen so far in his behaviour that leads me to think that he could possibly be sincere,” he said.

Earlier Russian television footage showed Mr Putin meeting with his defence minister and the chief of the general staff, and instructing them to put the nuclear deterrent on a “special regime of combat duty”.

“Western countries aren’t only taking unfriendly actions against our country in the economic sphere, but top officials from leading Nato members made aggressive statements regarding our country,” he said.

But on a day when the expected assault on Kyiv again failed to materialise and the Ukrainians claimed to have driven Russian forces out of the country’s second city Kharkiv, Mr Johnson said his words were “a distraction from the reality of what’s going on”.

“This is an innocent people who are facing a totally unprovoked act of aggression against them, and what’s actually happening is that they are fighting back perhaps with more effect, with more resistance, than the Kremlin had bargained for,” he said.

“You can see some of the logistical difficulties that the Russian forces are experiencing.

“The Russian defence ministry have themselves conceded that they’re having casualties. This is a disastrous misbegotten venture by President Putin.”

Ukrainian soldiers inspect a damaged military vehicle after fighting in Kharkiv (AP)

On Sunday, fierce clashes took place between Russian and Ukrainian forces in Kharkiv. Russian soldiers and armoured vehicles rolled into the city, in northeast Ukraine, and witnesses reported hearing firing and explosions. But city authorities said the attack had been repelled.

The city’s regional governor Oleh Sinegubov said: “Control over Kharkiv is completely ours. The armed forces, the police and the defence forces are working, and the city is being completely cleansed of the enemy.”

Ukraine‘s health ministry said on Sunday that 352 civilians, including 14 children, had been killed since the beginning of the conflict.

Additional reporting by PA