US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he doubted whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would use tactical nuclear weapons as Ukraine requested a sharp increase in Western military aid to defend its cities against missile attacks.
The Russian president, under domestic pressure to escalate the war as his forces have been stretched thin since early September, ordered missile strikes on Monday after Ukraine’s alleged attack on a Russian bridge over the weekend. Crimea was annexed in response.
In recent weeks, after declaring the referendum illegal, Moscow has moved to annex new areas of Ukraine, mobilized millions of Russians to fight, and repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons. Alarm spread in the West.
In an interview with CNN, Biden said that Putin is a “rational actor who has made a significant misjudgment.”
Asked how realistic he thought it would be for Putin to use tactical nuclear weapons, Biden replied: “Well, I don’t think he would.”
NATO is considering convening a virtual summit of the alliance to consider its response to Russia’s nuclear threats, annexation of Ukrainian territory and troop mobilization, a European diplomat said.
Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels on Tuesday that NATO had not noticed any change in Russia’s nuclear posture since the threats.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he expected a positive response from Western allies in Brussels on Wednesday to his pleas for a sharp increase in military aid as the country’s cities faced more Russian missile attacks.
After Monday’s barrage of Russian missiles, Zelenskiy on Tuesday appealed to the leaders of the Group of Seven countries for more air defense capabilities. The G7 vowed to support Kyiv “as long as it takes”.
The 50-nation US-led alliance will meet in Brussels on Wednesday on the sidelines of NATO’s defense ministers’ meeting.
“I look forward to progress with our partners on agreements on anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense and new supplies of various weapons and ammunition,” Zielinski said in an evening address on Tuesday.
The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday night that Russian missile strikes had damaged more than 10 cities, including Lviv, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Zaporizhzhia. Air raid sirens continued to ring throughout the country for the first two days.
“Over the past 24 hours, the occupiers have again resorted to mass missile attacks – more than 30 cruise missiles, seven airstrikes and 25 shelling incidents,” the Ukrainian Armed Forces said.
The Ukrainian command said its forces killed more than 100 Russian soldiers in the southern Kherson region. JEE News could not independently verify the battlefield reports.
The activity on Tuesday was less intense than a day earlier, when dozens of attacks began in Moscow on February 24, killing 19 people, injuring more than 100 and causing power outages across the country.
More missile strikes on Tuesday killed seven people in the southeastern town of Zaporizhzhia and left parts of the western city of Lviv without power, a presidential aide said.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Ryzhnikov celebrated the arrival from the United States of what he said were four additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), whose accuracy and long range gave Ukraine the ability to attack Russia’s artillery. Benefits are allowed to be reduced.
“HIMARS time,” he wrote on Twitter, “was a good time for Ukrainians and a bad time for the occupiers.”
Ukraine received the first of four IRIS-T air defense systems promised by Germany on Tuesday, a German defense ministry source said. The United States said it is expediting the shipment of NASAMS air defenses to Ukraine. Washington has already provided more than $16.8 billion in security aid to Ukraine during the war.
