Kiev has said Moscow was holding Minsk as a "nuclear hostage" after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to ally Belarus.
"The Kremlin took Belarus as a nuclear hostage," the secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, Oleksiy Danilov, wrote on Twitter, adding that the move was "a step towards the internal destabilisation of the country".
On Saturday, Putin said he and strongman Alexander Lukashenko "agreed" Russia would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
Lukashenko, who has been in power in Belarus for almost 30 years, is a key Putin ally.
A new campaign is underway this spring across Russia, seeking recruits to replenish its troops for the war in Ukraine.
As fighting grinds on in Ukrainian battlegrounds like Bakhmut and both sides prepare for counteroffensives that could cost even more lives, the Kremlin's war machine needs new recruits.
A mobilisation in September of 300,000 reservists — billed as a “partial” call-up — sent panic throughout the country, since most men under 65 are formally part of the reserve.
Tens of thousands fled Russia rather than report to recruiting stations.
The Kremlin denies that another call-up is planned for what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, now more than a year old.
Ukraine will no longer resort to "dangerous" monetary financing to fund the war against Russia, its central bank governor, Andriy Pyshnyi, told the Financial Times in an interview.
The head of the National Bank of Ukraine said that it had "created huge risks for macro-financial stability" when the bank was last year forced to print billions of hryvnia to plug a budget shortfall, adding that an "open conflict" with the government over the issue had been resolved.
"It was a quick remedy, but very dangerous," Pyshnyi told the newspaper.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has said he would push for fair peace in the war in Ukraine that included "territorial integrity" during a state visit to China next week.
Sanchez, speaking to journalists at the Ibero-American Summit meeting in the Dominican Republic, said he would discuss peace prospects with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is trying to position himself as a mediator in the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Spain, a NATO member whose foreign policy is closely aligned with the United States, is a staunch ally of Ukraine and will assume the presidency of the Council of the European Union in July.
Last month, Beijing outlined a 12-point peace plan and called for a comprehensive ceasefire. Xi recently travelled to Moscow, where he described China's position on the conflict as "impartial".
The US Department of Defense has said that there are no indications that Russia is preparing to use nuclear weapons after Moscow's announcement to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.
"We have seen reports of Russia's announcement and will continue to monitor this situation," the Department of Defense's press office said in a written statement.
"We have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor any indications Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon.
We remain committed to the collective defence of the NATO alliance."
Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed with the conclusions drawn by American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that US special services were involved in the Nord Stream pipeline explosions.
"The American journalist, who has become rather famous now worldwide, carried out such an investigation and as we know, drew a conclusion that the blast on the gas pipelines was organised by the US special services. I fully agree with such conclusions," Putin said, according to TASS news agency.
"I believe that it will be hard to attain this (the truth about the Nord Stream incident), but someday it will probably come out for sure what was done and how," Putin added.
Source: TRTworld.com