The world is now closer to “Armageddon” than it has ever been since the Cold War Cuban Missile Crisis as a result of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, according to U.S. President Joe Biden.
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Kyiv’s forces are fast recapturing more land as Putin’s seven-month invasion comes to an end, including more than 500 sq km in the south where they broke through a second major front this week.
Due to Russia’s shortcomings on the battlefield, Kremlin loyalists have expressed unusually vocal criticism, with one Russian-installed leader in occupied Ukrainian territory even suggesting that Putin’s defense minister should have killed himself.
The biggest risk since John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev clashed over missiles in Cuba in 1962, according to Biden, is that Putin, who turned 70 on Friday, may become so desperate that he will resort to using nuclear weapons.
Since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis, “we have not faced the specter of Armageddon,” Biden declared in New York. If events proceed as they have been, we face a direct threat to the use of nuclear weapons for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Because of his military’s, shall we say, “severe underperformance,” Putin “is not joking when he talks about the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons,” according to Biden.
So far, the possibility of Russia using a short-range, so-called “tactical” nuclear weapon instead of the “strategic” warheads on long-range missiles that Washington and Moscow have been stockpiling since the Cold War has raised concerns.
“I don’t think there’s any such thing as the capacity to quickly (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon,” Biden said, implying that it wouldn’t make much of a difference.
Putin has threatened to defend Russian soil, which he now claims comprises four Ukrainian territories he declared annexed last week, by any means necessary, including using Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
In statements to Australia’s Lowy Institute, Zelensky advocated for NATO to attack Russia in advance to prevent it from using nuclear weapons.
These remarks were condemned by the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, as “a call to spark yet another world war with unforeseen, horrible repercussions.” Zelensky’s comments, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, showed why Russia was justified in beginning its operation.
