Biden says U.S. would ‘respond’ to Russia if Putin uses chemical or biological weapons

President Joe Biden said Thursday NATO would respond “in kind” if Russia uses weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine.

“We will respond if he uses it,” Biden said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The nature of the response depends on the nature of the use.”

The president spoke after a marathon of summit meetings with the European Union, G-7 partners and NATO allies.

Biden also said he would support an effort to expel Russia from the G-20 group of economies.

The president declined to say whether the United States has evidence that China has helped Russia evade sanctions or sold American high tech equipment to Russia in violation of export bans.

“I think that China understands that its economic futures much more closely tied to the West than it is to Russia,” said Biden. “And so I am hopeful that he does not get engaged.”

“We also did discuss today that there’s a need for NATO to set up and and the EU to set up a system whereby we have an organization looking at who has violated any of the sanctions and where, when and how they buy [banned products],” said Biden.

On sanctions, Biden said the reason why he asked for the NATO meeting was “to be sure that after a month, we will sustain what we’re doing, not just next month, the following month, but for the remainder of this entire year. That’s what will stop him.” 

Biden that NATO allies had accomplished all three of his major goals in Brussels Thursday.

“First, to support Ukraine with military and humanitarian assistance. Second was to impose the most significant most significant economic sanctions regime ever, in order to cripple Putin’s economy and punish him for his actions. Third, was to fortify the eastern flank of our NATO allies who were obviously very, very concerned and somewhat worried what would happen,” Biden said.

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