Joe Biden in his State of the Union address warned Vladimir Putin would not stop at Ukraine as the US president asked Congress to "stand up" to Russia's aggression.
“If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not,” Mr Biden said.
Mr Biden’s statement comes a day after a senior Russian officer warned of a full-scale war in Europe as Sweden finally joined Nato.
Colonel-General Vladimir Zarudnitsky, head of the Russian army’s Military Academy of the General Staff, made the comments in an article for “Military Thought”, a defence ministry publication, the state RIA news agency reported on Thursday.
“The possibility of an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine - from the expansion of participants in ‘proxy forces’ used for military confrontation with Russia to a large-scale war in Europe - cannot be ruled out,” RIA cited him as saying.
Sweden became the 32nd member of the transatlantic military alliance, ending decades of post-World War II neutrality as concerns about Russian aggression in Europe have spiked following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.