US President Joe Biden compared the current situation with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, claiming that the possibility of a "nuclear armageddon" are very much real.
“Nuclear armageddon” are two words that we keep hearing since Russia invaded Ukraine on the 24th of February. At the time, Vladimir Putin scared everyone on the planet by deploying some tactical nukes on the border between Ukraine and Belarus, but it became almost immediately clear it was a bluff.
Nobody thought, at the time, that Kyiv had any chance of resisting. Sure, the west already knew the Ukrainians would put up a strong fight, something not considered at all by Putin and his generals. But what happened next truly shocked the world, and re-ignited fears of nuclear war.
In September, Ukrainian troops launched a surprise counter-offensive, which re-took the Kharkiv Oblast and kept pushing towards Russia’s border. Taken aback, Putin took a decision that changed the course of the war: he ordered the partial mobilization of 300.000 Russian reservists and called for a referendum in the remaining occupied regions.
The results were obvious, the four regions under Russian control “overwhelmingly agreed” with annexation to Moscow. No government in the World recognized the legitimacy of the vote, but it had a different significance for Putin. A significance that involves Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
What did Joe Biden say
It was US President Joe Biden that recently warned Russia could actually use the nuclear weapon against Ukraine. Indeed, Putin strongly hinted towards it saying that “Russia would use any means at her disposal to protect her territorial integrity”.
And this is what the illegal referendums truly mean. With this move, Putin now has a “legal” justification for the use of the nuclear weapon in case of further Ukrainian counter-offensive. After all, those territories love Russia so much, right?
Initially, the White House dismissed the possibility of a nuclear attack, saying that no intelligence report showed any movement of Russia’s arsenal.
Today, however, US President Joe Biden suggested that Putin’s threat is very much real and that “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.” The President here is referring to the 1962 crisis that saw Soviet and American warships loaded with nuclear weapons facing each other. Then, everything turned out fine, but for 13 days the world had been on the very edge of a nuclear armageddon.
Now, circumstances could be very different but Biden says that the threat exists nevertheless. The reason, he added, is that Putin’s military is “severely underperforming” and he might deploy a tactical nuclear weapon to turn the war around.
Biden’s speech came one month before the midterm elections in the United States, so his words might have been influenced by the upcoming vote. He needs all the support he can gather now, and needs to show he is a strong leader capable of facing Putin’s threats.
