The specter of the Cold War is resurfacing, according to Joe Biden.
The US president ruled Thursday that Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in the conflict in Ukraine put the world at risk of "apocalypse".
A first since the Cuban missile crisis, in the middle of the Cold War.
"We haven't faced the prospect of an apocalypse since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis" in 1962, he said at a fundraiser in New York, where he felt that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin "was not joking" in making these threats.
A "direct threat of the use of nuclear weapons"
“There is, for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, a direct threat of the use of nuclear weapons if things continue to go the way they are going now,” the US president said.
From October 14 to 28, 1962, the missile crisis installed in Cuba by the Soviet Union and spotted by the United States shook the planet, raising fears of a nuclear war.
Faced with stubborn Ukrainian resistance, fueled by Western military aid, Vladimir Putin alluded to the atomic bomb in a televised speech on September 21.
He said he was ready to use "all means" in his arsenal against the West, which he accused of wanting to "destroy" Russia.
"It's not a bluff," he assured.
VIDEO.
"It's not a bluff": the summary of Vladimir Putin's speech, September 21
Experts say such attacks would likely employ tactical nuclear weapons - smaller in explosive charge than a strategic nuclear weapon.
But Joe Biden has warned that even a tactical nuclear strike could ignite a wider conflagration.
Vladimir Putin "is not joking"
"I don't think you can easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon without ending up causing the apocalypse," he said.
Vladimir Putin "is not joking when he talks about the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons, because his army, one could say, is very inefficient", still judged the American president.
"We are trying to understand what Putin's way out is," Joe Biden finally said.
"How can he get out of this?"
How can he position himself so that he neither loses face nor loses a significant portion of his power in Russia?
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