By Andrea Shalal and Nandita Bose
(Reuters) – The United States sees no reason to change its nuclear posture and does not have indications that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons, the White House said on Friday after President Joe Biden on Thursday referenced nuclear Armageddon.
“He was reinforcing what we have been saying, which is how seriously we take these threats about nuclear weapons,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One when asked about Biden’s comments.
“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,” she said.
On Thursday, Biden said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine has brought the world closer to “Armageddon” than at any time since the Cold-War Cuban Missile Crisis.
Biden said he was keeping an eye on Putin and how he might react as Ukraine’s military makes gains against Russian invaders.
“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,” Biden told Democratic donors in New York.
In the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States under President John Kennedy and Soviet Union under its leader, Nikita Khrushchev, came close to the use of nuclear weapons over the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
Biden spoke at the New York home of businessman James Murdoch, turning to the son of conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch to try to boost his party’s chances in Nov. 8 congressional elections.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal, Nandita Bose and Jeff Mason; Editing by Alistair Bell)
