US President Joe Biden said the world faces the "prospect of Armageddon" with Russian President Vladimir Putin threatening to use nuclear weapons to protect Russian territory.
Biden said the Russian president was "not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons, because his military is, you might say, is significantly underperforming."
"For the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, we have a direct threat to the use of nuclear weapons, if in fact things continue down the path they'd been going," the US president said in New York on Thursday.
The Russian leader has threatened to protect Russian soil using any and all measures necessary — including using nuclear weapons. Moscow recently annexed four Ukrainian regions, in violation of international law, and Putin has said Russia would see Ukrainian attacks on these regions as attacks on Russia itself.
Russia's illegal annexation of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia followed what Kyiv and Western countries criticized as sham referendums in those territories.
Seven-months after Russia's invasion of Ukraine began, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Ukrainian military was quickly retaking lost ground, particularly in the south.
"There are successes in the east as well. The day will surely come when we will report on successes in the Zaporizhzhia region (in southeastern Ukraine) as well, in those areas that the occupiers still control," the Ukrainian president said.
Russian missile strike in Zaporizhzhia kills seven
At least seven people were killed and five others missing when Russian missiles struck an apartment building in the city of Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine early Thursday.
Zaporizhzhia regional governor Oleksandr Starukh said Russia used S-300 missiles in the attacks that damaged more than 40 buildings.
More than 20 individuals were rescued from the multistory apartment buildings, according to Starukh, who provided the casualty number.
Early on Friday, rescuers searched the rubble while a 3-year-old girl was taken to a hospital.
