U.S. President Joe Biden said that the risk of nuclear “Armageddon” is at the highest level since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, as Russian officials talk of the possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons after suffering massive setbacks in the eight-month invasion of Ukraine.
US intelligence agencies believe that Putin has come to see defeat in Ukraine as an existential threat to his regime, which he associates with an existential threat to Russia, potentially justifying the use of nuclear weapons.
Speaking at a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Biden said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “a guy I know fairly well” and the Russian leader was “not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons.”
“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.” He suggested the threat from Putin is real “because his military is — you might say — significantly underperforming.”
It was not immediately clear whether Biden was referring to any new assessment of Russian intentions.
“We have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture, nor do we have indication that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre earlier said.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Putin understood that the “world will never forgive” a Russian nuclear strike. “He understands that after the use of nuclear weapons he would be unable any more to preserve, so to speak, his life, and I’m confident of that,” Zelenskiy said.
