Biden Says Nuclear Risk Highest Since 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis

US President Joe Biden has said the risk of a nuclear “Armageddon” is at its highest level since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

Speaking at a private fundraising event, President Biden said Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was “not joking” when he talked about using tactical nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, after suffering setbacks in Ukraine.

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Mr Biden told fellow Democrats that for the first time since the Cuban missile crisis, the US now has a direct threat to the use of nuclear weapons, if things continue down the path they had been going.

In 1962, the US and the Soviet Union – under President Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev – came close to a nuclear showdown over the deployment of Russian nuclear weapons in Cuba.

During a speech last Friday, the Russian leader said the US had created a “precedent” by using nuclear weapons against Japan at the end of world war two.