It’s never going to feel normal to hear a president discussing the danger of “Armageddon” – especially now, on camera.

But Joe Biden used an exclusive CNN interview on Tuesday to send another careful, yet clear and chilling message to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the disastrous consequences of using nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.

The first president since the 1980s to really have to game out calculations about nuclear arsenals and deterrence, Biden was asked by Jake Tapper whether he thought that Putin – who has warned he is prepared to use every option in Russia’s arsenal – might consider detonating one of the world’s most heinous weapons as an act of desperation in a losing war.

Biden replied: “I don’t think he will.”

But the President, who first touched on this subject at an off-camera fundraiser in New York last week, made crystal clear he was sending a public message to Putin about the dangers of thinking that using a lower yield, tactical nuclear bomb would be an isolated event.

“What I am talking about, I am talking to Putin. He, in fact, cannot continue with impunity to talk about the use of a tactical nuclear weapon as if that’s a rational thing to do,” Biden said, before warning of dangerous consequences of such a move.

“The mistakes get made, the miscalculation could occur, no one could be sure what would happen and it could end in Armageddon,” he said, again stressing that a nuclear blast that kills thousands of people could lead to events barreling way out of control.

Biden is stating the fear of some strategists who warn about a ladder of escalation that could occur if a nuclear bomb is used and triggers reprisals by the West – even though any initial US response would certainly go no further than conventional military action.

He also appears to be trying to create a narrative of deterrence around the specific situation in Ukraine. The logic of the US and Russia’s long-range strategic nuclear arsenals is that the use of them is deterred because a conflict would be suicidal for both sides. That equation does not exist in Ukraine, since the country has no nuclear arsenal and it’s hard to conclude that it represents a vital national interest that would lead Washington to respond in kind to Putin going nuclear. By stressing that even a tactical device – which could be small enough to destroy an airbase or large enough to reduce a city to ruins – could lead to something worse, Biden seems to be almost seeking to create a new chain of calculations in Putin’s mind.

Two moments in Tapper’s interview brought home the burden now borne by the man who is followed everywhere he goes by a military officer carrying the nation’s nuclear codes.

First the CNN anchor asked the President to state the US red line for the US and NATO in Ukraine and what Washington would do if Putin bombed a nuclear plant in Ukraine or set off a tactical nuclear weapon.

“It would be irresponsible for me to talk about what we would or wouldn’t do,” Biden said.

Then, Tapper prodded the President over whether the Pentagon had gamed out scenarios. Biden soberly replied: “The Pentagon didn’t have to be asked.”

Most experts and strategists estimate that there are many reasons why Putin would stop short of using a nuclear weapon – among them the possible risk of radioactive fallout crossing into Russia or the fact that the use of a tactical nuclear weapon may not actually be a sensible strategic option in the war.

But the fact he’s pushed himself into a corner, along with his obliviousness to civilian loss of life underscored again by his callous assaults on Ukrainian cities this week, suggests that a humanitarian impulse is unlikely to be part of his calculation. And Biden himself said in the interview that while he believed Putin was a “rational actor,” he had made significant miscalculations and his objectives were not rational. That leaves open the possibility of even more decisions that appear irrational to the West but may seem reasonable in Putin’s warped logic.

That is why Biden and experts who have dedicated their careers to staving off a nuclear apocalypse say the possibility that Putin may go nuclear must be taken so seriously – even if the chances remain very low and the US would likely be able to detect well ahead of time if Russia’s atomic devices were on the move.

“It’s not a probable event. It’s not even likely,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear non-proliferation expert and former president of the Plowshares Fund, said on CNN’s “Newsroom” on Tuesday.

“But this is a low probability, high consequence event. If he uses even one nuclear weapon, he’s bringing us into a whole new world. He’s causing massive damage. And he’s running the risk of escalation with exchanges from the West that could lead to further exchanges, et cetera.”

Cirincione explained that even if Putin’s saber rattling represented a political threat designed to scare the West, it cannot be discounted.

“He has the means. He has the doctrine that allows him to use it. And he has the motive. He is losing this war. He has to do something to try to turn the tide of battle in desperation. He might turn to a nuclear weapon.”

While some critics have faulted the President for mentioning words like “Armageddon” and comparing his rhetoric to that of Putin, the motivations of the two men are very different. At a minimum, the Russian leader is boasting about nuclear weapons to scare the world. Biden is speaking publicly to stave off the possibility of disaster.

One reason the war in Ukraine is so dangerous is that nearly eight months in, there remains no prospect of any genuine diplomatic process that could defuse it. Ukraine’s forces, using US and allied weapons systems, are making remarkable progress on the battlefield and are determined to repel an unprovoked invasion that has caused carnage and extensive destruction. Putin has thrown so much personal prestige and Russian blood into the war he can hardly afford any outcome he cannot spin as a win, despite his autocratic grip on Russia.

Biden signaled in the Tapper interview that he saw no real rationale to meet Putin when both leaders are expected to be at the G20 summit in Indonesia next month. But he did leave one intriguing door open to the Russian leader, saying he’d sit down with Putin if he were willing to discuss the fate of US basketball star Brittney Griner, who was sentenced in August to nine years in prison after pleading guilty to drugs smuggling. The US says Griner and another American, former US Marine Paul Whelan, have been wrongfully detained. Washington has offered to swap jailed Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout for the two Americans.

“Look, I have no intention of meeting with him, but look, if he came to me at the G20 and said, ‘I want to talk about the release of Griner,’ I would meet with him, but that would depend,” Biden said.

The President also downplayed the idea that more generally there was anything to talk about.

“He’s acted brutally, I think he’s committed war crimes, and so I don’t… see any rationale to meet with him now.”

Sometimes, it’s better not to pay that property bill.

A British man who managed New York real estate belonging to Oleg Deripaska was arrested after being indicted for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions against the Russian oligarch, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

Graham Bonham-Carter, a member of the politically connected family which includes celebrated actress Helena Bonham-Carter, was taken into custody in the U.K. for wire fraud in connection with funding U.S. properties purchased by Deripaska, the government said in a statement.

Under Deripaska’s employment, Bonham-Carter transmitted payments from a bank account in Russia held in the name of GBCM Limited to bank accounts held by Gracetown Inc. in New York City between March and December last year, according to the statement.

It said Gracetown used the funds from GBCM to “pay for various expenses…including staff salaries, property taxes and other services, and to maintain and keep up the U.S. properties.”

Those properties include townhouses in Lenox Hill and the West Village, which Deripaska bought for nearly $50 million in total, plus a mansion in Washington, D.C. They are among eight properties owned in New York City by Russians whose vast wealth largely derived from industries once owned by the Russian state.

The Real Deal has mapped those properties here.

Bonham-Carter allegedly violated sanctions placed on Deripaska in 2018 for actions the Russian government had taken in Ukraine, which it later invaded. The Justice Department cited emails since 2018 in which Bonham-Carter refers to Deripaska as “boss.”

However, it appears that nobody has paid property taxes lately at Deripaska’s New York City addresses, where more than $15,000 in interest has accrued on $175,000 due in 2022, according to the city’s Department of Finance.

Bonham-Carter also allegedly lied to an auction house after being confronted for trying to move a piece of Deripaska’s art from New York to London in an apparent violation of U.S. sanctions, according to the Justice Department.

Bonham-Carter was charged with three crimes — two related to sanctions violations and one count of wire fraud. Each count carries a maximum term of 20 years in prison. The government will seek to extradite Bonham-Carter, who appeared in a London courtroom Tuesday, to the U.S.

Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations has denounced Russia as a “terrorist state” during an emergency meeting of the UN General Assembly that came just hours after Ukrainian cities were struck by a wave of deadly missile strikes.

“Russia has proven once again that it is a terrorist state that must be deterred in the strongest possible ways,” said Ambassador Serhiy Kyslytsya.

The UN had scheduled the October 10 meeting to discuss a draft resolution condemning Russia’s recent annexation of four Ukrainian territories, a violation of international law.

But the session was soon dominated by Western condemnation of Russia’s decision to launch more than 80 missiles at Ukrainian cities in retaliation for what Moscow has called Kyiv’s “terrorist” actions, including a blast that damaged a key route for delivering supplies and reinforcements to Russian forces fighting in southern Ukraine.

The early morning strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure and urban residential areas hit major cities across the country, including Kyiv, killing at least 14 people and injuring 97, according to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry.

They were the most punishing attacks launched by Russian forces in months and were seen as a major escalation of the war launched by Moscow in February.

Ahead of the UN meeting, U.S. President Joe Biden said the strikes demonstrated the “utter brutality” of the war initiated unprovoked by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The United States strongly condemns Russia’s missile strikes today across Ukraine, including in Kyiv. These attacks killed and injured civilians and destroyed targets with no military purpose. They once again demonstrate the utter brutality of Mr. Putin’s illegal war on the Ukrainian people,” Biden said in a statement.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the strikes as an “unacceptable escalation of the war” by Russia.

WATCH: Ukraine has reported dozens of missile strikes across its territory, including the capital, Kyiv, in a significant escalation of Russian attacks.

A spokesman for Guterres said in a statement ahead of the emergency UN meeting that the secretary-general was “deeply shocked by today’s large-scale missile attacks by the armed forces of the Russian Federation on cities across Ukraine that reportedly resulted in widespread damage to civilian areas and led to dozens of people being killed and injured.”

The 193-member UN General Assembly decided on October 10 to hold a public vote, rather than a secret ballot, on a draft resolution that would condemn Russia’s “illegal so-called referenda” held in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya regions, as well as Russia’s “attempted illegal annexation” of the territories.

Diplomats said the vote on the resolution would likely be held on October 12. The majority of countries, 107, voted in favor of holding a public vote, while 13 countries opposed, 39 abstained, and the remainder did not vote.

Russia vetoed a similar resolution in the 15-member Security Council in September.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a video call with members of Russia’s Security Council, said the October 10 strikes were retaliation for what he called Kyiv’s “terrorist” actions, including the October 8 blast that damaged the Crimea Bridge, a key rail and highway route for supplies and reinforcements for Russian forces fighting in southern Ukraine.

Putin said more such Russian strikes could be expected.

“Let there be no doubt,” Putin said. “If attempts at terrorist attacks continue, the response from Russia will be severe.”

Earlier, former Russian President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the strikes on Kyiv and other major cities were only “the first response” to the explosion on the Crimea Bridge that left a column of train cars burning and sent one section of the highway into the Kerch Strait.

Russia has said that the suspected truck bombing was an act of terrorism carried out by the Ukrainian special services. Ukraine has not taken credit for the incident.

Following Biden’s comments, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova blamed the United States for holding up possible negotiations to end the war, which Moscow officially calls a “special military operation.”

“We repeat once again especially for the American side: The tasks that we set in Ukraine will be solved,” Zakharova wrote on the ministry’s website.

“Russia is open for diplomacy and the conditions are well known. The longer Washington encourages Kyiv’s bellicose mood and encourages rather than hinders the terrorist undertakings of Ukrainian saboteurs, the more difficult will be the search for diplomatic solutions.”

Kyiv, which has retaken large swaths of Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine’s south and east in recent weeks, has ruled out negotiations with Putin, saying that Russia is making unacceptable demands and that Putin’s actions have made talks impossible.

Ukraine was left reeling by the early morning strikes on October 10.

While Putin said his forces had launched “precision weapons” from the air, sea, and ground to target key energy and military command facilities in Ukraine, the strikes hit residential areas and critical infrastructure facilities alike.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said on the Telegram messaging app that four cities — Lviv, Poltava, Sumy, and Ternopil — had no electricity following the attacks and that electricity supplies had been partially disrupted in other parts of the country. In the east, passenger rail service was cut off between Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, and Izyum — a city that was taken shortly after Russia’s unprovoked invasion in February but which Kyiv recently retook in a major counteroffensive.

Several explosions rocked the center of the capital, Kyiv, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video message filmed outside his presidential office that Russia had intentionally targeted the country’s energy infrastructure and timed the strikes to inflict the greatest number of human losses.

In his nightly evening address to the nation on October 10, Zelenskiy said from a damaged civilian area near a Kyiv university that “Ukraine cannot be intimidated. We united even more instead.”

International reaction to the October 10 missile strikes was swift, with the United States, the European Union, and NATO condemning the strikes and the Group of Seven announcing it would hold emergency talks on October 11 that would be preceded by an address by Zelenskiy.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that he had spoken with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba to “reiterate U.S. support for Ukraine following the Kremlin’s horrific strikes.” Blinken said the United States would continue to provide “unwavering economic, humanitarian, and security assistance so Ukraine can defend itself and take care of its people.”

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Earlier, EU Foreign Affairs chief Josep Borrell also spoke with Kuleba after the attacks, which Borrell “condemned in the strongest possible terms.” The EU’s top diplomat also expressed his condolences for those who died in the strike and said those responsible would be held accountable.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said in a tweet after speaking with Kuleba that he “condemned Russia’s horrific and indiscriminate attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.”

Ukrainian President Zelenskiy said in his morning video address that the strikes were an act of terrorism.

“This morning is difficult. We are dealing with terrorists,” Zelenskiy said, noting the Russian military’s use of Iranian drones to carry out the strikes.

“They are trying to destroy us and wipe us off the face of the earth…destroy our people who are sleeping at home,” Zelenskiy said.

Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valeriy Zaluzhniy said on Twitter that Russia used drones to launch a total of 75 rockets on Ukraine, more than half of which he claimed were destroyed by Ukrainian air defenses.

With reporting by dpa, AP, and Reuters

The £130m Dragonfire programme is one of the most advanced weapons systems currently being tested by the British military.

The ‘death ray’ will be capable of firing bursts of high-energy light particles that can rip apart targets in the blink of an eye.

It’s set to be rolled out across the UK armed forces, fitted on Royal Navy warships, RAF jets, helicopters and in land-based air defence variants.

An impression of the laser weapon in action on a Type 26 frigate.

Development of Dragonfire is being led by a consortium of international defence firms and the Ministry of Defence.

The first batch of trials has now been completed, which tested the accuracy of a low-powered version of the laser against targets in the air and at sea – with the consortium behind the project saying Dragonfire passed with flying colours with ‘exceptionally high accuracy’.

The success has now paved the way for the next phase of the trials, which will see the UK tested its first high-power laser version.

The Dragonfire system which has now completed its first set of accuracy tests on targets in the air and at sea.

Chris Allam, managing director of defence firm MBDA UK, said: ‘The success of these trials is a key step in the development of sovereign laser directed energy weapons.

‘It is the culmination of a lot of hard work from both the industry and Dstl (Defence Science and Technology Laboratory) teams, overcoming disruption due to Covid and technical challenges from the use of unique innovations in Dragonfire that are testing the very limits of what is physically possible in the laser weapons domain.’

Dragonfire was revealed in 2017, with the then-Second Sea Lord of the Royal Navy, Vice Admiral Jonathan Woodcock championing the system.

Addressing senior military figures and defence leaders during his 2017 Trafalgar Day speech, Vice Adm Woodcock said it had been hoped the first ‘capability demonstrator’ of the system would ‘fire in 2019’.

An impression of the laser system fitted on a Wildcat helicopter.

But delays hampered this plan, pushing back the planned rollout into the army and navy by the mid-2020s.

Speaking on Twitter today about the news of Dragonfire’s first tests, Sir Jonathan said: ‘Great to see but such a shame it’s not 2019, the date I set for it to be trialled at sea and the date signed up to by the consortium.’