• Biden said Putin was “not joking” when he threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons.
• US officials have warned for months that Russia could deploy WMD if it suffers battlefield setbacks.
• Ukraine is retaking Russian-occupied territory, including four regions Russia illegally annexed.

Joe Biden says the chance of a nuclear “Armageddon” is the biggest since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Biden said Putin was “not joking” when he threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons following losses in Ukraine.

He added that the US was “trying to figure out” Putin’s exit strategy.

US and EU have said to take Putin’s nuclear threats seriously.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said last week that despite Moscow’s nuclear hints, the US has seen no indicators that Russia was about to use a nuclear bomb.

Ukraine is retaking Russian-occupied territory, including four regions Russia illegally annexed.

US officials have warned for months that Russia could deploy WMD if it suffers battlefield setbacks.

Biden claimed Putin was “not joking” about employing tactical nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons because “because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming”.

“For the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, we have a direct threat to the use of nuclear weapons, if in fact things continue down the path they’d been going,” Mr Biden told fellow Democrats.

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

Since Kennedy’s Cuban Missile Crisis, we haven’t faced Armageddon.

In a speech last Friday, President Putin stated the US created a “precedent” by using nuclear weapons against Japan at the close of World War II.

Putin has promised to use all means to safeguard Russian territory.

Even as Putin signed the final documents annexing four Ukrainian provinces – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson – Kyiv’s army advanced within them.

Hundreds of thousands of men have fled Russia rather than fight in Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelensky has dismissed Moscow’s nuclear warnings as “continuous propaganda”

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Paul Stronski told the BBC that Russia’s “destabilising rhetoric” deters the West.

Russia has resisted Moscow’s nuclear threats. Nezavisimaya Gazeta criticised “high Russian authorities” for “talking about the nuclear button”

“To accept nuclear conflict in ideas and words is to allow it in reality.”

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman: Nuclear war “must never be waged”

Mr Biden made his remarks during a Democratic fundraiser event at the New York home of James Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Also Read

Russia-Ukraine crisis: Wounded and wanting to return to war

Vladyslav is running out of patience. The 29-year-old is a patient at...