US President Joe Biden has said the threat of nuclear “Armageddon” is at its highest level since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Mr Biden said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “not kidding” when he talked about using tactical nuclear weapons after the setbacks in Ukraine.
He added that the US was “trying to figure out” Mr Putin’s way out of the war.
The United States and the European Union have previously said that Mr. Putin’s nuclear annihilation should be taken seriously.
However, U.S. National Security Adviser Jack Sullivan said last week that, despite Moscow’s nuclear signals, the U.S. has seen no signs that Russia is preparing to use nuclear weapons immediately.
Ukraine is taking back territories occupied by Russia, including four territories that were recently illegally annexed by Russia.
For months, US officials have been warning that Russia could resort to using weapons of mass destruction if it suffers a setback on the battlefield.
President Biden said that Russian leaders were not “joking” when they talked about using tactical nuclear, biological or chemical weapons — “because their military, you could say, is significantly underperforming.” is demonstrating”.
“For the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, we are in direct danger of using nuclear weapons, if in fact things continue on the path they have been going,” Mr. Biden told fellow Democrats.
“We haven’t faced the possibility of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
During a speech last Friday, President Putin said the United States had set a “precedent” by using nuclear weapons against Japan at the end of World War II – a comment that may not have gone unnoticed by Western governments. Our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg pointed out. .
Mr. Putin has also threatened to use all possible means to protect Russian territory.
Even as Mr Putin signed the final documents formally annexing four Ukrainian regions – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kherson – Kyiv’s forces were advancing inside the areas it claimed. .
Millions of men are fleeing Russia rather than waiting to be drafted to fight in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky previously dismissed Moscow’s nuclear threats as “a persistent narrative of Russian officials and propagandists”.
Paul Stronsky of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told that Russia’s “destabilizing rhetoric” is aimed at deterring the West.
There has also been some pushback in Russia itself against Moscow’s nuclear threats. An editorial in the country’s mainstream newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta sharply criticized “senior Russian officials” for “talking about a nuclear button”.
“Allowing, in thought and word, is a sure step toward allowing in reality the possibility of nuclear conflict.”
A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman told reporters on Thursday that Moscow had not changed its position that a nuclear war “should never break out”.
Mr Biden’s comments came at the New York home of James Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, during a Democratic fundraising event.
