Ukraine: Biden warns of a risk of nuclear "apocalypse", kyiv regains ground

Europe 1 with AFP 07:00, October 07, 2022

US President Joe Biden warned on Thursday of the risk of an "apocalypse", for the first time since the Cold War, due to threats to use nuclear weapons by Russia, whose troops are under pressure by the Ukrainian counter-offensive.

Mr. Biden said he wondered about a way out for his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

"How can he get out of this? How can he position himself so as not to lose face, nor lose a significant portion of his power in Russia?" Asked the American president during a collection of fund in New York.

Faced with stubborn Ukrainian resistance fueled by Western military aid, Putin hinted at the atomic bomb in a televised speech on September 21.

He said he was ready to use "all means" in his arsenal against the West, which he accused of wanting to "destroy" Russia.

"It's not a bluff," he assured.

"We haven't faced the prospect of an apocalypse since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis" in 1962, the US president warned Thursday.

kyiv quantifies its earnings

According to experts, an atomic attack would likely employ tactical nuclear weapons -- smaller in explosive charge than a strategic nuclear weapon.

But Washington considers that even a tactical nuclear strike could trigger a wider conflagration.

Vladimir Putin "is not joking when he talks about the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons, because his army, one could say, is very inefficient", still judged the American president.

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Ukrainian troops have been on the offensive on all fronts since early September and have already recaptured most of the Kharkiv region in the northeast, and important logistical nodes such as Izium, Kupyansk and Lyman (East ).

“Since October 1 alone and in the Kherson region alone, more than 500 km2 of territory and dozens of localities have been liberated,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday evening.

Speaking a few hours earlier before the European leaders gathered at the summit, Mr. Zelensky called for the continuation of military aid to kyiv so that "the Russian tanks do not advance on Warsaw or even on Prague".

Sign of the annoyance of the Kremlin, the French ambassador to Moscow Pierre Lévy was summoned Thursday because of the deliveries of weapons to Ukraine by Paris.

The Moscow army, for its part, assured in its daily report that it had "repelled the enemy" in the same region of Kherson where kyiv claims its new successes.

According to her, the Ukrainian forces deployed four tactical battalions on this front, ie several hundred men, and "several times tried to break through the Russian defenses" near Dudtchany, Sukhanové, Sadok and Bruskinskoye.

"New World War"

Faced with the setbacks of the Russian army in Ukraine and a chaotic mobilization in Russia which has pushed hundreds of thousands of his compatriots into exile, the Russian president assured Wednesday that the military situation would "stabilize".

While Moscow only partially controls these areas and is in difficulty there militarily, Mr. Putin signed a law on Wednesday consecrating the annexation of four Ukrainian regions after the holding of "referendums" of self-determination without "any legal value " in the eyes of the UN, and denounced as "simulacra" by kyiv and its allies.

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Another point of friction, Moscow castigated on Thursday remarks by Mr. Zelensky who spoke during an interview of NATO's "preventive strikes" against Russia, prompting the Kremlin to denounce a "call to start a new world war with monstrous and unforeseeable consequences".

The Ukrainian presidency split a message explaining that Mr. Zelensky's remarks were misunderstood and that he was talking about sanctions and not nuclear strikes.

On the front, Ukrainian soldiers interviewed by AFP said they finally saw "the light at the end of the tunnel", thanks to their recent successes, after more than seven months of a grueling war.

Risk in Zaporizhia

The bombardments continued, notably in Zaporijjia, in southern Ukraine, one of the regions that Moscow claims to have annexed, where a strike left at least seven people dead and five missing, according to local governor Oleksandr Starukh.

In the Donetsk region (east), another territory annexed by Moscow, at least 14 people have been killed and 3 injured in the past 24 hours in areas under kyiv control, according to the Ukrainian presidency.

The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, was in kyiv on Thursday to discuss the establishment of a "protection zone" around the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, which is regularly targeted by fire including Russians and Ukrainians blame each other.

“We continue to say what needs to be done, which is basically to avoid a nuclear accident at the plant, which remains a very, very clear possibility,” he argued.