WWNC – President of the United States Joe Biden stated on Wednesday that he did not believe Russian President Vladimir Putin would deploy a tactical nuclear bomb, despite Ukraine’s urgent request for a swift increase in Western military assistance to guard against missile attacks on its cities.
Two days after launching a volley of missiles against Ukrainian towns in a significant escalation of the conflict, explosions rocked the Russian-occupied southern towns of Kherson and Melitopol, and air raid sirens sounded over Kiev.
In response to an alleged Ukrainian attack on Russia’s bridge to the occupied Crimea this weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Monday’s missile attacks under pressure from his own people to escalate the war. His forces have been losing territory since early September.
Recently, Moscow has taken steps to annex further portions of Ukraine following referendums that have been widely criticized as being unconstitutional, rallied hundreds of thousands of Russians to fight, and repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons, raising anxiety in the West.
In a CNN interview, Biden claimed Putin is a “intelligent actor who has greatly miscalculated.”
When asked whether he thought it was likely that Putin would use a tactical nuclear weapon, Biden said, “Well, I don’t think he will.”
In spite of the warnings, according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the military alliance has not seen any modifications to Russia’s nuclear posture.
According to the Ukrainian military, its forces forced Russian troops out of a number of communities in the Kherson region that were close to the Russian-occupied town of Beryslav.
The Kherson and Melitopol explosions, which Russian media reported, elicited no instant claims of responsibility.
Additionally in the south, Russian missiles destroyed structures in the Zaporizhzhia region overnight, although no injuries were reported, according to Oleksandr Starukh, the territory’s governor, in a message on the messaging service Telegram. Even as locals cleaned up following Monday’s bombings, air raid sirens continued to wail over Kyiv.
Yulia Datsenko, a 38-year-old paramedic, observed the destruction to her flat and said, “It is not that they are battling the military; they are just driven by the urge to destroy, demolish, to destroy us.”
Moscow’s largest aerial offensive since the start of its invasion on February 24 resulted in 19 fatalities, over 100 injuries, and a nationwide power outage on Monday.
A presidential adviser reported that more missile strikes on Tuesday left a portion of the western city of Lviv without electricity and seven people dead in the southeast town of Zaporizhzhia.
