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President Joe Biden doesn’t believe that Russia will resort to using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, he said in an interview on Tuesday, but the possibility of “a horrible outcome” in the war has prompted the Pentagon to game out the U.S. response to their use.
“I don’t think he will, but I think that it’s irresponsible for him to talk about it, the idea that a world leader of one of the largest nuclear powers in the world says he may use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine,” Biden said of Russian president Vladimir Putin in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. “Once you use a nuclear weapon, the mistakes that can be made, the miscalculations, who knows what would happen?”
In the interview, conducted in the Map Room of the White House shortly after Biden met with the Group of Seven leaders to discuss the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, the president accused Putin of having committed war crimes in the eight months since Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine, and said that he doesn’t “see any rationale” to meet with him.