Pentagon: No sign Putin is planning to use nukes after Biden’s ‘Armageddon’ comment
The Pentagon said Friday that it still has seen no indications that Vladimir Putin is planning to launch nuclear weapons after President Joe Biden warned of the risk of a nuclear “Armageddon.”
Biden’s comments show how seriously the U.S. is taking Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons, Defense Department spokesperson J. Todd Breasseale said in a statement to POLITICO.
“However — and to be clear: we have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor do we have indications that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons,” he said.
U.S. officials told POLITICO that nothing has changed on the nuclear front in the past 24 hours. On Thursday, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters that the department does not have any information that would cause it to change its nuclear posture.
On Thursday night, Biden issued a stark warning during remarks at a Democratic fundraiser in New York, where he was introduced by James Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, according to the White House.
Biden compared Putin’s recent threats to use a nuclear weapon to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the moment when the two nuclear superpowers last came close to a nuclear crisis. [Continue reading…]