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President Vladimir Putin on Sept. 21 warned the West he was not
bluffing when he said he would be ready to use nuclear weapons
to defend Russia against what he said was "nuclear blackmail"
from major Western powers.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who has cautioned that the world faced
the biggest risk of nuclear Armageddon since the 1962 Cuban
Missile Crisis, said he doubted that Putin would use a tactical
nuclear weapon in Ukraine.
"We express our daily regret that Western heads of state, in the
United States and Europe, engage in nuclear rhetoric every day,"
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of Biden's interview to
CNN.
"We consider this a very harmful and provocative practice,"
Peskov said.
The NATO military alliance is proceeding with its annual nuclear
preparedness exercise "Steadfast Noon" next week, in which NATO
air forces practise the use of U.S. nuclear bombs based in
Europe with training flights, without live weapons.
Peskov said that remarks by NATO Secretary-General Jens
Stoltenberg, who said that if Putin wins the war it would be a
defeat for the West, showed that NATO was essentially fighting
on Ukraine's side.
Asked about the prospect of a Biden-Putin meeting, Peskov said
there had been no attempt from either side to discuss a possible
one.
"As far as I know, there have been no initiatives from either
the Russian or the American side to organize contacts at the
highest level," Peskov said.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Toby Chopra)
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