President Biden warned yesterday that Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons amounted to the most serious “prospect of Armageddon” in 60 years. Via the Washington Post:

Biden’s comments came during a Democratic fundraiser in New York City, where he spent much of the time warning about the threats he said are posed by Republicans but also brought up Putin and Russia’s war on Ukraine. The president told attendees that he knows Putin “fairly well” and said that the Russian president was “not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons.”

He added, “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis. I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.” In 1962, President John F. Kennedy confronted Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev over missile sites the Soviets were building in Cuba, a standoff that many feared could lead to a nuclear war.

Biden added: “We are trying to figure out, what is Putin’s off-ramp? Where does he find a way out? Where does he find himself where he does not only lose face but significant power?”