US President Joe Biden has said that the risk of a nuclear Armageddon is at its highest level since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. He said that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was serious when he spoke of using tactical nuclear weapons after suffering setbacks in Ukraine.
The US President also warned that the use of a lower-yield tactical weapon could quickly spiral out of control into global destruction.
The US and the EU have previously said that Putin’s nuclear sabre-rattling should be taken seriously. However, the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan last week said that despite Moscow’s nuclear hints, the US had seen no signs that Russia was imminently preparing to use a nuclear weapon.
The 13-day showdown in 1962 that followed the US discovery of the Soviet Union’s secret deployment of nuclear weapons to Cuba is regarded by experts as the closest the world has ever come to nuclear annihilation.