BIDEN: ‘ARMAGEDDON’ POSSIBLE – warns world closer to nuclear war than ever since 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis – SAYS PUTIN ‘NOT JOKING’ ABOUT USE OF TACTICAL NUKES
Biden said his concerns stem from the fact that he feels he knows and understands Russian President Vladimir Putin “fairly well” and that he believed the former KGB spymaster “not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons”
President Joe Biden said Thursday that the world was closer to the brink of nuclear war that it has been since the famed 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
The president’s shocking comments came while he was speaking at a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, when the first term Democrat said the risk of a nuclear “Armageddon” was at its highest since the infamous standoff five decades ago.
Russia, which harbors the largest nuclear arsenal in the world and has a balance of both long rage ‘strategic’ nuclear weapons and short range ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons said repeatedly boasted about its ability to utilize the latter as part of an advance to recover the advantage in their failed eight-month invasion of Ukraine.
Biden said his concerns stem from the fact that he feels he knows and understands Russian President Vladimir Putin “fairly well” and that he believed the former KGB spymaster “not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons.”
Biden also said, “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” adding that he believed the threat from Putin was genuine “because his military is — you might say — significantly underperforming.”
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U.S. national security officials have suggested of the Kremlin could launch weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine as a means of saving face and recovering lost ground as they have encountered repeated defeats in the battlefield.
While the president’s words were the most serious thus far about a possible nuclear strike, media reports indicated it was not clear as to whether a specific act or development prompted Biden to make the comments.
“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 said Tuesday.
In 1962 the world endured a terrifying 13-day standoff after U.S. intelligence learned the Soviet Union had secretly deployed nuclear weapons to Cuba.
That standoff, which tested the brinkmanship of both the White House and Kremlin is widely considered regarded the closest the world has come to a bipolar nuclear war. That crisis, which began during the Kennedy administration, set the tone for an emphasis on arms control between the East and West.