NEW YORK: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine has brought the world closer to “Armageddon” than at any time since the Cold-War Cuban Missile Crisis, US President Joe Biden said.

Putin celebrated his 70th birthday to fawning praise from some officials. But with his seven-month invasion unravelling, public events appeared sparse, a contrast to just a week ago, when he staged a huge concert on Red Square to proclaim the annexation of nearly a fifth of Ukrainian land.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv’s forces were swiftly recapturing more territory, including more than 500sq-km in the south where they burst through a second major front this week.

Russia’s failings on the battlefield have brought unusual public recrimination from Kremlin allies, with one Russian-installed leader in occupied Ukrainian territory going so far as to suggest Putin’s defence minister should have shot himself.

Biden said the prospect of defeat could make Putin desperate enough to use nuclear weapons, the biggest risk since US President John Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev faced off over missiles in Cuba in 1962.

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” Biden said in New York. “For the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, we have a direct threat to the use of nuclear weapons, if in fact things continue down the path they’d been going.”

Putin was “not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons, because his military is, you might say, is significantly underperforming,” Biden said.

Concern so far has been over the prospect of Russia deploying a so-called “tactical” nuclear weapon — a short-range device for use on the battlefield — rather than the “strategic” weapons on long-range missiles that Washington and Moscow have stockpiled since the Cold War.

But Biden suggested it made little difference: “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”

Meanwhile, the White House, after Biden’s nuclear Armageddon comments, said on Friday that the United States sees no reason to change its nuclear posture and does not have indications that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons.

“He was reinforcing what we have been saying, which is how seriously we take these threats about nuclear weapons,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One when asked about Biden’s comments.

“We have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture, nor do we have indications that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons,” she said.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2022