BIDEN SOUNDS NEW PUTIN NUKE ALERT

PRESIDENT SAYS ‘ARMAGEDDON’ THREAT IS HIGHEST SINCE THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

- Nicholas Cecil

‘Putin’s not joking when he talks about using nuclear weapons’

JOE BIDEN issued a chilling warning today that Vladimir Putin could unleash a nuclear “Armageddon” in a desperate attempt to avoid a crushing defeat in Ukraine.

The US president said that Russia’s leader now posed the biggest threat of the use of nuclear weapons since the Cuban missile crisis 60 years ago.

He sounded the alarm as Mr Putin’s regime was being hit with a growing public backlash against his failing invasion, which has seen tens of thousands of Russian soldiers sent to their deaths, with many more left maimed or wounded. Ukrainian forces, who have also suffered heavy losses, were now swiftly recapturing more territory, especially in the south of the country, said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Mr Putin has escalated his rhetoric, including the threat of a nuclear attack, as his army has been forced to retreat by Ukrainian troops who have been supplied with modern equipment from the West. He ordered a 300,000 part- mobilisation and proclaimed the “annexation” of a swathe of land in the war-torn country.

“For the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, we have a direct threat to the use of nuclear weapons, if in fact things continue down the path they’d been going,” Mr Biden told Democratic party donors in New York. “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”