“We haven’t faced the prospect of the end of the world since the Kennedy and Cuban missile crises,” Biden said at a fundraiser on Thursday, citing the October 1962 crisis that left the U.S. and the Soviet Union nearly two weeks apart. on the brink of nuclear war.
“The president reflected the very high risk that is happening right now,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.
“Neither we nor our allies will be intimidated by this, and we will continue to provide necessary support and security assistance to Ukraine,” Kirby added of Putin.
Pompeo said a Biden administration would be better off using “silent diplomacy” to push Putin to understand the consequences of using nuclear weapons. “I want them to do it quietly,” he told host Shannon Bream.
“My guess is that the Ukrainians were involved,” Pompeo said, discussing Saturday’s bombing on the Kerch Bridge linking Russia and Crimea.
Regardless of who damaged the bridge, the attack was a symbolic failure for Putin, Pompeo said, noting that the bridge was grandly opened by Putin in May 2018. “In different historical periods … people dreamed of building the bridge,” Putin told the workers at the time. “Then they came back into the field in the 1930s, 40s, 50s. Finally, thanks to your work and your talent, the magic happened.”
On Sunday, Pompeo said the attack on the bridge was another sign of how bad Russia’s war on Ukraine had become.
“The Russian military is desperately losing,” Pompeo said.
Congressman. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) agrees that Putin’s situation is increasingly desperate.
“I do think Vladimir Putin is a cornered animal,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I think he’s unpredictable, unstable now. He’s been beaten bit by bit in Ukraine and he’s embarrassed.”
But the former general. Wesley Clark, a former NATO allied commander in Europe, said he believed Putin’s threatening language was an attempt to sow discord in the West and encouraged Western leaders to seek a negotiated solution to legalize Putin’s land grab from Ukraine.
“When Putin says nobody can win a nuclear war, then why would he threaten a nuclear war?” Clark said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”
“Because this is basically a psychological effort against the United States and people like Donald Trump are embracing it, they want to undermine the West’s willingness and resolve to help Ukrainians in this fight.”