- Biden is preparing in case Putin decides to use nuclear weapons, his chief of staff said in October.
- Biden is “very focused on being prepared if Putin does and trying to figure out what we can do to deter him,” Ron Klain said.
- Klain was interviewed by author Chris Whipple for his book on Joe Biden’s White House.
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President Joe Biden said he takes Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons seriously and is preparing for it behind the scenes.
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain told author Chris Whipple in an October interview that the prospect is not beyond the realm of possibility.
“’We are on a path that could lead to this result. We don’t know what Putin will do, but tragically it’s not impossible to imagine,'” Klain is quoted as saying in Whipple’s book, The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House, published Jan. 17.
Klain told Whipple at the time that Biden was “very focused on being prepared if Putin does and figuring out what we can do to stop him.”
Whipple interviewed Klain on Oct. 8, a few days after Biden spoke about Putin and promised “Armageddon” at a fundraiser in New York City.
Biden indicated at the time that Putin was “not joking” about the possible use of tactical nuclear or chemical weapons because his military was underperforming in Ukraine Wall Street Journal reporter Tarini Parti and The Associated Press.
“We haven’t faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” the president said said then.
Whipple wrote that Biden was “preoccupied with the possibility that Putin might use a nuclear weapon,” and shared CIA Director Bill Burns’ “conviction” that “the Russian autocrat’s calculus was that Ukraine was existentially at stake.”
Putin has repeatedly issued nuclear threats since the start of the unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February, including when he escalated the war in September by announcing a partial military mobilization.
“Those trying to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the prevailing winds can turn in their direction,” Putin said at the time.
Burns, a former US ambassador to Russia, told Whipple in April that the CIA had made “a variety of assessments” about the likelihood of Putin ordering a nuclear strike. “‘Given the saber-rattling we’ve heard from the Russian leadership, we cannot take these possibilities lightly,'” he said, according to the book.
Analysts sounded the alarm over Putin’s remarks, but claimed the likelihood that he would actually use such a weapon was still slim.
Many leading Russia experts have suggested that Putin’s nuclear threats are largely aimed at preventing the West from continuing to provide security aid to Kyiv. The US and its allies have provided Ukraine with billions in aid since the war began, including vital weapons that helped Ukrainian forces repel the Russian invaders and made significant headway in a counteroffensive launched in August.
Indeed, Western countries have not allowed Putin’s threats to stop them from supplying arms to Ukraine, but they have also been wary of sending certain types of arms and equipment in the face of lingering questions and concerns about the Kremlin’s red lines. The issue has resurfaced in recent discussions about a Western deadlock on the supply of main battle tanks to Ukraine. During a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the West should not allow Putin to be provoked in order to prevent him from supplying heavy weapons to Ukraine.
“He will not use nuclear weapons,” Johnson said of Putin, according to The Guardian, arguing that doing so would put Russia in “cryogenic paralysis” and turn countries like India and China against Moscow.
“People argue that we shouldn’t escalate and be wary of doing things that further provoke Putin,” Johnson said. “How can we escalate against a guy who is waging an all-out war on civilians?”
Insider’s Kelsey Vlamis and Lloyd Lee contributed to this story.