The threat of Vladimir Putin using tactical nuclear weapons is “real”, Joe Biden has said, days after denouncing Russia’s deployment of such weapons in Belarus.

“When I was out here about two years ago saying I worried about the Colorado river drying up, everybody looked at me like I was crazy,” the US President told a group of donors in California on Monday.

“They looked at me like when I said I worry about Putin using tactical nuclear weapons. It’s real,” Mr Biden said.

On Saturday, Mr Biden called Putin’s announcement that Russia had deployed its first tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus “absolutely irresponsible”.

Last week, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said his country has started taking delivery of Russian tactical nuclear weapons, some of which he said were three times more powerful than the atomic bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

The deployment is Russia’s first move of such warheads – shorter-range, less powerful nuclear weapons that could be used on the battlefield – outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.

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