US President Joe Biden confirmed Monday that Russia has employed hypersonic missiles in its invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
“And if you’ll notice, [Russia has] just launched the hypersonic missile, because it’s the only thing that they can get through without absolute certainty,” Biden said. “It’s, as you all know, it’s a consequential weapon, and, but with the same warhead on it as any other launch missile, it doesn’t make that much difference, except it’s almost impossible to stop it. There’s a reason they’re using it.”
Biden, speaking to a group gathered at the Business Roundtable CEO Quarterly Meeting, said, “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s back against the wall, he wasn’t anticipating the extent or strength of our unity, and the more his back is against the wall, the greater severity of the tactics he may employ.”
Biden outlined a series of resources the US has deployed to Ukraine and NATO allies in the region, detailing $2 billion in funding to NATO alone and significant military resources to Ukraine, which he said are “wreaking havoc on the Russian military, whether it’s their tanks or their helicopters or their aircraft.”
“The idea that they don’t have enough sophisticated equipment is just simply not accurate, and I’m not going to take the time to go into all the detail here, but the point is, they have every equipment, every piece of equipment that makes rational sense based on our military and NATO’s military to be able to do what they’re doing,” Biden told the CEOs.
The President repeated warnings that Russia was likely to conduct “false flag operations,” including the possibility of a chemical weapons attack in Ukraine.
“Whenever he starts talking about something he thinks NATO, Ukraine or the United States is about to do, it means he’s getting ready to do it. Not a joke,” Biden said.