Putin and Biden
Putin and BidenReuters

US President Joe Biden urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to not use tactical nuclear or chemical weapons in the wake of setbacks in Ukraine.

Biden’s comments were made in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” which will air on Sunday and of which excerpts were released on Saturday.

Asked what he would say to Putin if he was considering using such weapons, Biden replied, “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t. It would change the face of war unlike anything since World War Two.”

Biden also said the US response would be “consequential,” but declined to give detail.

Russia “would become more of a pariah in the world than they ever have been. Depending on the extent of what they do will determine what response would occur,” added the President.

The interview comes as Russia suffers some setbacks after being repelled by Ukrainian forces who have launched a counterattack in recent days.

Russia's forces left Izium and other parts of the Kharkiv region last week amid the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country’s forces had recaptured 6,000 square kilometers (2,320 square miles) of territory from Russia this month.

The fighting in Ukraine has long raised concerns that Putin could use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

In March, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told PBS in an interview that Russia would resort to nuclear weapons only in the case of a “threat to the existence” of his country.

“We have a security concept that very clearly states that only when there is a threat for existence of the state, in our country, we can use and we will actually use nuclear weapons to eliminate the threat for the existence of our country,” he stated.

Peskov’s remarks about the use of nuclear weapons came several days after he made similar comments in an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

During that interview, Peskov repeatedly refused to rule out that Russia would consider using nuclear weapons against what Moscow saw as an "existential threat."

Asked under what conditions Putin would use Russia's nuclear capability, Peskov replied, "if it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be."