President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian nuclear deterrent forces on alert amid tensions with the West over Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Western nations agreed to unleash new sanctions to further isolate Russia’s economy and financial system after initial penalties failed to persuade President Vladimir Putin to withdraw his forces from Ukraine.
A decision to penalize Russia’s central bank and exclude some Russian banks from the SWIFT messaging system, used for trillions of dollars worth of transactions around the world, was announced Saturday in a joint statement by the U.S., European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, U.K. and Canada. The agreement includes measures to prevent the Russian Central Bank from deploying its international reserves to undermine sanctions.
