US President Joe Biden today blamed Moscow’s “brutal, needless” war in Ukraine for rising famine in the developing world and denounced what he called Russian President Vladimir Putin's “irresponsible nuclear threats” hours after the former KGB officer rattled his atomic saber, The Times reports. 

Speaking at the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York, Biden said Russia’s “imperial” invasion had “shamelessly violated” the world body’s charter and declared reports atrocities by Putin’s forces “should make your blood run cold.”

He spoke hours after the Russian leader warned he might use nuclear weapons if threatened and announced plans to call up as many as 300,000 reservists in a de facto acknowledgement that the seven-month-old conflict has gone extremely badly for Moscow.

“Just today, President Putin has made overt nuclear threats against Europe, in a reckless disregard for the responsibilities of the non-proliferation regime,” Biden said. “A nuclear war cannot be won. And must never be fought.”

And he condemned Russia’s plans to use a “sham referendum” in occupied parts of eastern Ukraine as a precursor to annexing them.

“The United States wants this war to end on just terms, on terms we all signed up for: That you cannot seize a nation’s territory by force,” the president said as part of his full-throated condemnation of the war.