After Joe Biden told a crowd that the battle may result in “armageddon,” the White House insisted that it has no reason to think that Vladimir Putin will deploy nuclear weapons in his campaign against Ukraine.
After Mr. Biden’s attendance at a DNC fundraiser last week sponsored by James Murdoch, the son of Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, the West Wing communications team made its most recent effort to clear up after the president’s remarks.
While the conflict between the two nations rages on and the odds seem to be stacked against the Russian invaders, Mr. Biden made a comment at the gathering on reports that Mr. Putin may be contemplating performing a nuclear test close to Ukrainian territory.
The Russians couldn’t test such a device, according to the US president, without the war substantially escalating.
According to The Hill, he told the audience, “We have not encountered the danger of Armageddon since JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
The Russian president is “a guy I know really well,” Mr. Biden continued, “and when he speaks about the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons or chemical or biological weapons because his Army is, you could say, dramatically underperforming, he’s not joking.”
Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on board Air Force One on Friday that the US had no basis to imply that any such test or genuine stationing of nuclear weapons would take place in the near future in an effort to quell the emotional reaction to those remarks.
“There is no need for us to change our own strategic nuclear posture, and there are no signs that Russia is getting ready to deploy nuclear weapons soon,” she said.
She went on to say that the president was just criticizing Mr. Putin for the rhetorical choices he had made in recent weeks regarding the deployment of nuclear weapons.
In September, Mr. Putin made it plain that if Nato’s invasion of Ukraine approached Russian territory, Russia would contemplate using nuclear weapons against Nato.
