Ukraine Says Russian Troops Failed to Storm Kyiv

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said on Monday that the Russian army failed to break through the defenses of Kyiv.

"All attempts by the Russian troops to achieve the goal have failed," the ministry added in a statement, stressing that the opponent suffered significant losses.

"Russian forces are demoralized and exhausted. We showed that we can protect our home from uninvited guests," the statement read.

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Moreover, the Ukrainian Army has regained control over Kharkiv city after heavy fighting with Russian troops, Governor Oleh Synyehubov said on Sunday.

“We are in complete control of Kharkiv,” Synyehubov said on Telegram, adding, “The armed forces, the police, and the defense forces are working inside the city, and the enemy has been completely expelled from Kharkiv.”

On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered nuclear forces put on high alert in response to what he called “aggressive statements” by leading NATO powers. This comes in a dramatic escalation of East-West tensions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The order means Putin wants Russia’s nuclear weapons prepared for increased readiness to launch and raises the threat that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the West’s response to it could boil over into nuclear warfare.

Amid the worrying development, the office of Ukraine’s president said a delegation would meet with Russian officials as Moscow’s troops drew closer to Kyiv.

Putin, in giving the nuclear alert directive, cited not only the alleged statements by NATO members but the hard-hitting financial sanctions imposed by the West against Russia, including the Russian leader himself.

Speaking at a meeting with his top officials, Putin told his defense minister and the chief of the military’s General Staff to put the nuclear deterrent forces in 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,” Putin said in televised comments.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Putin was resorting to a pattern he used in the weeks before launching the invasion of Ukraine, “which is to manufacture threats that don’t exist in order to justify further aggression. The global community and American people should look at it through that prism. We’ve seen him do this time and time again.”