president biden says he believes that s because of how terribly russia is doing on the battlefield. he used the word underperforming, how he believes the setbacks, humiliating and the draft that putin put in place is all factoring into this. it seems to be causing a real sense of concern for president biden tonight who said he believes the world is the closest it has been to the potential nuclear catastrophe since the 1960s. since the cuban missile crisis, of course, we are coming up on the anniversary of that quite soon. president biden said tonight we have not faced the prospect of armageddon since kennedy and the cuban missile crisis. he is talking about putin. a guy we know fairly well, he is not joking when he talks about the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, as you might say, significantly underperforming. he made clear, don, washington is trying to figure out what putin s end game is going to be,
what his exit strategy in ukraine is going to be. that s notable as well because he first raised the prospect of wondering what that is back in may. kaitlin, biden s own national security council and state department have been more measured on this issue. how alarming to see the president speaking like this? i have asked officials about this. they said he is making clear how seriously they are taking putin s threats. officials made clear to the russian counterparts behind the scenes what the consequences would be if russia decided to do this. but you re right. we have not seen officials at the pentagon or the state department or the national security council go as far as president biden did tonight, invoking armageddon, saying that he believes there is no possible use of a tactical nuclear weapon without it actually getting to armageddon. there has been this idea of what if russia deployed one over the black sea, what if they used a smaller one in a certain area to send a warning s
this is don lemon tonight. breaking news. a chilling warning from the president of the united states. president joe biden at fundraiser in new york warning about the dangers of vladimir putin s threats to use nuclear weapons as his forces suffer setbacks in ukraine. the president saying for the first time since the cuban missile crisis we have the threat of a nuclear weapon and warning of what he calls the prospect of armageddon. straight to cnn s kaitlan collins with the latest. good evening. these comments from president biden are frightening. what did he say? frightening, alarming, blunt. a lot of words to describe these comments that president biden made tonight in a closed door democratic fundraiser in new york. he spoke, frankly, about what he believes is the actual real threat that putin is posing right now when he talks about this threat of nuclear war. we have seen him kind of dangle out there in the speeches he has given lately.
that this is that dangerous and that s why don t take the first step. this is a way then of giving, i would imagine, giving putin anan off-ramp. we talked about it with matthew chance and me. we saw the beginning of the war. we reported on the beginning of the war. what is the off-ramp? is there an off-ramp? do you see one for putin at this point? i think there are many off-ramps. i don t think we should be overly worried about that in this sense. putin can, you know, the ukrainians have not driven every russian soldier out of ukraine. they are still fighting very fiercely. the russians may well hold on to a certain part of donbas, maybe parts of crimea. putin can claim he has secured and supported the ukrainian-speaking people he wanted to there. remember, he controls the media landscape 100% in russia.
within a few weeks destroy every russian armored column in the whole of ukraine. in other words, the essentially destroy all russian troop formations. the ukrainians would then have essentially won the war. they would walk in, reoccupy their territories. general petraeus talked about sinking every ship in the back sea. this is quite doable for the american military. they own the skies. they know how to do this thing. this is like gulf war one. and i think something like that would be both a sufficient deterrent, and i know something like this has been communicated to the russians. i don t know the specifics, but some kind of major response. and at that point putin would have to think about because all putin is thinking about is his own power, how do i stay in power. and to have an utterly humiliating, crushing military defeat where your entire army is