Russia Ukraine war live: Putin’s threat of using tactical nuclear weapons is ‘real’, warns Biden

The threat of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s use of tactical nuclear weapons is “real,” his US counterpart Joe Biden said days after he denounced Russia’s use of such weapons in Belarus.

“When I was out here about two years ago and said I was worried the Colorado River was going to dry up, everyone looked at me like I was crazy,” Biden told a group of donors in California on Monday.

“They looked at me like they did when I said I was worried that Putin might use tactical nuclear weapons. It’s real,” Biden said.

Mr Biden last week called Mr Putin’s announcement that Russia had deployed its first tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus as “absolutely irresponsible”.

This came as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said his country had begun supplying Russian tactical nuclear weapons, some of which he said were three times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Russia launched a wide-ranging airstrike on Ukraine overnight, targeting the capital and cities in a wide east-west arc while most of the country spent several hours through the night with air sirens wailing.

The attack hit “critical infrastructure” in the city of Lviv and sparked a fire, officials at the military administration in the city of about 700,000, which is just 70 km (43 miles) from the border with NATO member Poland, said.

No immediate casualties were reported.

The Russian airstrike targeted telecommunications infrastructure and agricultural and agricultural land, said Yuri Malashko, head of the military administration of the Zaporizhia region in south-eastern Ukraine.

The Kiev military administration said its air defense systems were busy repelling the Russian drone attack on the capital and the region.

The overall extent of the attack and the full extent of the damage was not immediately clear.

Ukraine has bravely resisted Putin’s twisted attempt to reclaim territory lost to Moscow from the collapse of the Soviet Union and continues to defy odds, using Western military aid to hold off Russian attacks.

Thomas Kingsley And Joe Sommerlad Report:

“We will turn people against the war,” said jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny as he faces another trial.

Navalny, 47, is already serving a total of 11.5 years in prison and is now facing a range of charges related to alleged “extremist” activities. Acquittals by opposition figures are practically unknown in Russia.

As reporters waited for news from the hearing, Navalny’s camp announced a new campaign to turn Russian public opinion against Putin and the war in Ukraine.

Navalny, who posts on social media through his lawyers and allies and who incited tens of thousands of people to take to the streets in the 2010s, called on Russians to “join forces in the fight against Putin’s lies and the Kremlin’s hypocrisy.”

He asked marketing and IT specialists, sociologists, political scientists, donors and volunteers to register.

“We will campaign against the war. And against Putin. Just that. “A long, persistent, arduous, but fundamentally important campaign, with which we will turn people against the war,” he said.

The next presidential election in Russia is in 2024 and Putin has yet to confirm whether he will run.

Navalny’s movement is banned from all political activity, but he said it can still make a powerful impact through targeted messaging because “every grandmother now has WhatsApp and Telegram.”

“Our activities are of course declared illegal and subversive. “All the forces of the state apparatus are thrown into the fight against it,” said Navalny.

“Well, great, and we will put all our forces into the fight against the war machine, the corruption and the stupidity.”

He said Putin is a talentless military leader who “madly and stupidly” led Russia to an impasse with his all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

After the phone call between Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday, a Downing Street spokesman said: “The Prime Minister paid tribute to the courage of the Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines of the counter-offensive and said it was clear that they were making good ones.” progress.

“He told President Zelenskyy that the UK stands firmly behind Ukraine as they continue to push back invading Russian troops.

“Small steps forward would bring success,” added the Prime Minister.”

The Ukrainian president said the pair discussed his country’s need for long-range weapons and advocated tougher sanctions against Russia.

Mr Sunak, who visited Washington for talks with US President Joe Biden earlier this month, said Britain and the US were “in lockstep in their unwavering support for Ukraine”.

Both Mr Sunak and President Zelenskyy are expected to address the UK-hosted conference on Ukraine’s reconstruction this week.

Downing Street said the two leaders agreed that this was “a unique opportunity to underscore the strong public and private sector support for Ukraine and to demonstrate the country’s transformation and ongoing reforms”.

Ukraine is said to have retaken its first village in several days – while fierce fighting continues on the front lines.

A Russian-installed official said Ukraine had recaptured Piatykhatky, a village in the southern Zaporizhia region, and was entrenching itself there while coming under fire from Russian artillery.

“The enemy’s ‘wave’ offensives showed results, despite huge losses,” official Vladimir Rogov told the news app Telegram.