NEW YORK - US President Joe Biden said Thursday that the world risks nuclear armageddon for the first time since the Cold War and he is trying to find Russian President Vladimir Putin's off-ramp in the Ukraine conflict.
Since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, we have not had to face the prospect of Armageddon, Biden said at a Democratic party fundraising event in New York.
Putin is not joking when he threatens to use nuclear weapons in his invasion of Ukraine, Biden said.
Biden made a series of comments about the risks created by Putin's nuclear threats while speaking to party supporters at an event held in the Manhattan home of James Murdoch, the son of newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Biden said that for the first time since the Cuban missile crisis, the use of nuclear weapons is a direct threat to the United States if things continue the path they are going in response to the nuclear standoff triggered by the Soviet Union stationing missiles in Cuba. Putin has made thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons if he feels that he has run out of options in his bid to seize swaths of Ukrainian territory in the face of stiff resistance from Western-backed Kyiv.
These would most likely be small tactical strikes, according to experts. Biden warned that a tactical strike in a restricted area would still lead to a wider conflagration.
Biden said he had a guy that I know a lot. I don't think there is a way to use a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon, which is why Putin is not joking when he talks about the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons.
Biden says he's trying to figure out what is Putin's off-ramp. Where does he find himself in a position that he does not lose face but rather loses significant power within Russia?