GOING NUCLEAR

Biden: Putin Is ‘Not Joking,’ ‘Risk’ of ‘Armageddon’ Highest Since 1962

The president said Putin is “a guy I know fairly well,” adding that he was trying to figure out the Russian leader’s “off-ramp.”

President Joe Biden said Thursday that the risk of “Armageddon” is the closest it’s been since 1962’s Cuban Missile Crisis given Russia’s threats to use tactical nuclear weapons. Speaking at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fundraiser in New York, Biden bluntly invoked the apocalyptic language in suggesting Russian leader Vladimir Putin—“a guy I know fairly well”—was prepared to go to extremes after his troops’ faltering invasion of Ukraine. “He’s not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming,” Biden said. Last month, Putin suggested in a national address that his forces would “certainly use all the means at our disposal” if Russia felt its “territorial integrity” was at stake. Biden said on Thursday that he was still “trying to figure out” the best way to de-escalate the crisis—to find, as he put it, Putin’s “off-ramp” in Ukraine.