President Joe Biden continued to explain and modfiy his warning about nuclear “Armageddon” from Russia, a stark suggestion about the potential for escalation in Russia’s war against Ukraine he made last week.
Asked by CNN host Jake Tapper whether he thought Putin would actually use nuclear weapons, Biden said in an interview that aired Tuesday, “I don’t think he will. But I think that it’s irresponsible for him to talk about it.”
The threat of a nuclear weapon could lead, Biden said, “to just a horrible outcome. And not because anybody intends to turn it into a world war or anything, but … the mistakes that can be made, the miscalculations, who knows what would happen?”https://911c63d6ca8ec50e15735d95f66abd1c.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
In recent weeks, Putin has hinted at the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine as the military situation has deteriorated for Russian forces. “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Biden said Thursday during a fundraiser.
The U.S. has not seen any imminent indication Russia plans to use nuclear weapons, the Pentagon said Friday, though some nuclear experts and former officials told POLITICO that Biden’s comment was not an exaggeration of the situation.
In the pre-taped interview with Tapper at the White House, the president declined to draw a “red line” for actions against Ukraine that would elicit a direct military response to Russia.
“It would be irresponsible of me to talk about what we would or wouldn’t do,” Biden said.
In a clip of the interview released earlier Tuesday, Biden described Putin as “a rational actor who’s miscalculated significantly” in invading Ukraine.
Biden joined Tapper on Tapper’s first night of a temporary run anchoring the 9 p.m. hour. The slot has been without a regular host since former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo was ousted by the network last year, and the interview was the network’s first with Biden since he became president.