EXPLAINER: Does Putin’s alert change risk of nuclear war?

By ROBERT BURNS
AP National Security Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s implied threat to turn the Ukraine crisis into a nuclear war presents President Joe Biden and U.S. allies with choices rarely contemplated in the atomic age. One choice is whether to raise the alert level of U.S. nuclear forces in response. Putin put Russian nuclear forces in what he called a “special regime of combat duty.” But it was not immediately clear how that might have changed their status in practical terms, if at all. Russia, like the U.S., keeps its land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles on a high state of readiness at all times. And it is believed that Russian submarine-based nuclear missiles, like America’s, are similarly postured.