Australia and New Zealand condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin's escalation of the war in Ukraine, saying his threats to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia were "unthinkable" and exposed his justification for the war as untrue.
Putin ordered Russia's first wartime mobilisation since World War Two on Wednesday, shocking citizens with what Western countries described as an act of desperation in the face of a losing war effort, and announced moves to annex swaths of Ukrainian territory while threatening to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia.
