June 19 (Portal) – President Joe Biden on Monday said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to use tactical nuclear weapons was “real”, just days after he denounced Russia’s use of such weapons in Belarus.
On Saturday, Biden called Putin’s announcement that Russia had deployed its first tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus “absolutely irresponsible.”
“When I was out here about two years ago and said I was worried the Colorado River was going to dry up, everyone looked at me like I was crazy,” Biden told a group of donors in California on Monday.
“They looked at me like they did when I said I was worried that Putin might use tactical nuclear weapons. This is real,” Biden said.
Last week, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said his country had begun supplying Russian tactical nuclear weapons, some of which he said were three times more powerful than the atomic bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The deployment marks Russia’s first use of such warheads — shorter-range, less powerful nuclear weapons that could be used on the battlefield — outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The United States has said it has no intention of changing its stance on strategic nuclear weapons in response to deployment, and has seen no signs that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon.
In May, Russia dismissed Biden’s criticism of his plan to use tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, saying the US had deployed such nuclear weapons in Europe for decades.
The Russian deployment is closely watched by the US and its allies, as well as China, which has repeatedly warned against using nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.
Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Atherton, California and Nandita Bose in Washington; Edited by Robert Birsel
Our standards: The Thomson Portal Trust Principles.