President Biden said definitively that Americans need not worry about the threat of nuclear war as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine persists.
A reporter asked Mr Biden on Monday if Americans should “be worried about nuclear war”.
“No,” Mr Biden responded.
Mr Biden’s words comes less than a week into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian president Vladimir Putin announced that Russia’s nuclear forces were being put “on alert”, which he said was in response to “aggressive statements” by Nato.
The concern comes as the United States and its allies have taken aggressive actions against Russia since the invasion. A senior administration official outlined the United States’ sanction of the Russian Central Bank in a background press call.
“It takes trust and solidarity to sanction the central bank of a one and a half trillion-dollar economy, multiples larger than Iran’s or Venezuela’s,” a senior administration official told reporters. “The ruble is in free fall, and soon you’ll see inflation spike and economic activity contract. This is a vicious feedback loop that’s triggered by Putin’s own choices and accelerated by his own aggression.”
The announcement comes as the United States has already moved to sanction multiple Russian banks and took extraordinary measures to weaken the nation’s economy.
But Mr Biden has said that the United States would not commit ground troops to the fight against Russia. The US has also rebuffed Ukraine’s request for a no-fly zone, noting that such a move would amount to a pretext to US military combat in Ukraine.
