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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Biden: Nuclear ‘Armageddon’ risk highest since ’62 crisis

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1009 days ago
20221007
President Joe Biden aboard Marine One arrives at the Wall Street Landing Zone in New York, Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022, to attend a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee reception. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

President Joe Biden aboard Marine One arrives at the Wall Street Landing Zone in New York, Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022, to attend a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee reception. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden said Thurs­day that the risk of nu­clear “Ar­maged­don” is at the high­est lev­el since the 1962 Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, as Russ­ian of­fi­cials speak of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of us­ing tac­ti­cal nu­clear weapons af­ter suf­fer­ing mas­sive set­backs in the eight-month in­va­sion of Ukraine.

Speak­ing at a fundrais­er for the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­to­r­i­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, Biden said Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin was “a guy I know fair­ly well” and the Russ­ian leader was “not jok­ing when he talks about the use of tac­ti­cal nu­clear weapons or bi­o­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal weapons.”

Biden added, “We have not faced the prospect of Ar­maged­don since Kennedy and the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis.” He sug­gest­ed the threat from Putin is re­al “be­cause his mil­i­tary is — you might say — sig­nif­i­cant­ly un­der­per­form­ing.”

U.S. of­fi­cials for months have warned of the prospect that Rus­sia could use weapons of mass de­struc­tion in Ukraine as it has faced a se­ries of strate­gic set­backs on the bat­tle­field, though Biden’s re­marks marked the stark­est warn­ings yet is­sued by the U.S. gov­ern­ment about the nu­clear stakes.

It was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear whether Biden was re­fer­ring to any new as­sess­ment of Russ­ian in­ten­tions. As re­cent­ly as this week, though, U.S. of­fi­cials have said they have seen no change to Rus­sia’s nu­clear forces that would re­quire a change in the alert pos­ture of U.S. nu­clear forces.

“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.

The 13-day show­down in 1962 that fol­lowed the U.S. dis­cov­ery of the So­vi­et Union’s se­cret de­ploy­ment of nu­clear weapons to Cu­ba is re­gard­ed by ex­perts as the clos­est the world has ever come to nu­clear an­ni­hi­la­tion. The cri­sis dur­ing Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy’s ad­min­is­tra­tion sparked a re­newed fo­cus on arms con­trol on both sides of the Iron Cur­tain.

Biden al­so chal­lenged Russ­ian nu­clear doc­trine, warn­ing that the use of a low­er-yield tac­ti­cal weapon could quick­ly spi­ral out of con­trol in­to glob­al de­struc­tion.

“I don’t think there is any such a thing as the abil­i­ty to eas­i­ly use a tac­ti­cal nu­clear weapon and not end up with Ar­maged­don,” Biden said.

He added that he was still “try­ing to fig­ure” out Putin’s “off-ramp” in Ukraine.

“Where does he find a way out?” Biden asked. “Where does he find him­self in a po­si­tion that he does not not on­ly lose face but lose sig­nif­i­cant pow­er with­in Rus­sia?”

Putin has re­peat­ed­ly al­lud­ed to us­ing his coun­try’s vast nu­clear ar­se­nal, in­clud­ing last month when he an­nounced plans to con­script Russ­ian men to serve in Ukraine.

“I want to re­mind you that our coun­try al­so has var­i­ous means of de­struc­tion ... and when the ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty of our coun­try is threat­ened, to pro­tect Rus­sia and our peo­ple, we will cer­tain­ly use all the means at our dis­pos­al,” Putin said Sept. 21, adding with a lin­ger­ing stare at the cam­era, “It’s not a bluff.”

White House na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er Jake Sul­li­van said last week that the U.S. has been “clear” to Rus­sia about what the “con­se­quences” of us­ing a nu­clear weapon in Ukraine would be.

“This is some­thing that we are at­tuned to, tak­ing very se­ri­ous­ly, and com­mu­ni­cat­ing di­rect­ly with Rus­sia about, in­clud­ing the kind of de­ci­sive re­spons­es the Unit­ed States would have if they went down that dark road,” Sul­li­van said.

Ukraine Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy said ear­li­er Thurs­day that Putin un­der­stood that the “world will nev­er for­give” a Russ­ian nu­clear strike.

“He un­der­stands that af­ter the use of nu­clear weapons he would be un­able any more to pre­serve, so to speak, his life, and I’m con­fi­dent of that,” Ze­len­skyy said.

Biden’s com­ments came dur­ing a pri­vate fundrais­er for De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate can­di­dates at the Man­hat­tan home of James and Kathryn Mur­doch. He tends to be more un­guard­ed — of­ten speak­ing with just rough notes — in such set­tings, which are open on­ly to a hand­ful of re­porters with­out cam­eras or record­ing de­vices.

Miller re­port­ed from Wash­ing­ton.

By AAMER MAD­HANI and ZEKE MILLER-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

RussiaUkraine Russia CrisisUkraine Russia War


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