US President Joe Biden has said that the risk of nuclear “Armageddon” is at the highest level since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis as Russian President Vladimir Putin has not ruled out the use of nuclear weapons due to the conflict escalation in Ukraine.  

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Biden said at a Democratic party fundraiser in New York Thursday night.

“We’ve got a guy I know fairly well,” he added on Putin later. “He’s not joking when he talks about the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons, or biological or chemical weapons, because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.”

The US President said that he was still “trying to figure” out Putin’s “off-ramp” in Ukraine.

“Where does he find a way out? Where does he find himself where he does not only lose face, but significant power?”

After signing a decree on partial mobilization in the country on September 21, Putin said that Moscow will take all “urgent steps” to protect its sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity to counter the “aggressive policy of part of the Western elites” who he said are “striving with all their might” to maintain their dominance.

The Russian President had also accused “some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO states” of making statements about the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction against Russia.

“To those who allow themselves to make such statements about Russia, I would like to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction, and for some components – even more modern than those of the NATO countries. And when the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. It’s not a bluff,” said Putin.

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