Here are the highlights of events related to the war in Ukraine over the past 24 hours:

Biden: For the first time since the Cold War, there is a threat of nuclear Armageddon

US President Joe Biden said the world risks facing nuclear Armageddon for the first time since the beginning of the Cold War.

“We haven't faced the prospect of nuclear Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962”, Biden said at a Democratic fundraiser in New York.

Putin said he was "not kidding" when he threatened to use nuclear weapons to continue his invasion of Ukraine, Biden said.

He commented on the risks posed by Putin's nuclear threats while speaking to party supporters at an event held at the Manhattan home of James Murdoch, son of newspaper magnate Rupert Murdoch.

Referring to the nuclear standoff caused by the deployment of missiles by the Soviet Union in Cuba, in close proximity to the United States, Biden said that "for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, we have a direct threat of using nuclear weapons if things continue to develop in such a way".

Putin has made veiled threats to use nuclear weapons if he feels he has exhausted his options in his bid to seize swathes of Ukrainian territory amid stiff resistance from pro-Western Kyiv.

Experts say these will most likely be relatively small, tactical strikes. But Biden warned that a tactical strike in a limited area would still risk wider repercussions.

"We have a guy I know pretty well," Biden said. The US president added that Putin "isn't kidding when he talks about the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, arguably, significantly less effective."

European leaders discuss common actions against Russian aggression

Russia's war in Ukraine, the energy crisis and the economic situation in Europe continue to be discussed in Prague by the heads of state and government of the 27 member countries. They are in the Czech capital for today's informal meeting of the European Union.

European leaders will discuss common actions against the Kremlin's continued aggression against the backdrop of the partial mobilization announced by the Russian president and Moscow's illegal annexation of Ukrainian territories.

It will be discussed how to continue the financial and military support for Kyiv, as well as the new package of sanctions against Russia, in which there is a proposal to cap the prices for Russian oil. How to ensure security of energy supply at affordable prices for households and businesses for the coming winter, and energy measures to reduce electricity consumption are also among the topics of the informal council in Prague.

President Rumen Radev will also participate in it.

Macron urged Erdogan not to avoid sanctions against Russia

French President Emmanuel Macron called on his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to resist attempts to evade sanctions imposed on Russia over the war in Ukraine.

Macron "underscored the importance of European sanctions regimes to stop Russian expansion and called for combating any strategies to circumvent them," the French presidency said after talks between the two leaders at the Prague summit.

There are concerns in Europe and the United States that Turkey - which has not imposed sanctions on Moscow - is being used as a haven for those seeking to evade Western measures.

Turkey's trade with Russia has soared during the war in Ukraine, drawing increasing irritation from Washington, which worries that Russian oligarchs and big businesses are using Turkish structures to evade sanctions.

Last month, Ankara bowed to pressure from the United States, confirming that the last three banks still processing Russian card payments were shutting down.

The decision followed weeks of increasingly sharp warnings from Washington to NATO member Turkey to either limit its economic ties with Russia or face the threat of sanctions on its own.

Japan banned the export of over 400 goods to Russia

As of today, the sanctions imposed in connection with the government decision approved on September 26 to impose a ban on the export of goods related to the production of chemical weapons in the Russian Federation entered into force in Japan.

The list of goods includes 73 types of chemicals, including chlorine, methanol, acetone, ethylene and sodium hypochlorite. In addition, the export of 16 types of chemical equipment, such as centrifuges, heat exchangers and condensers, is prohibited.

Japanese authorities have already approved several packages of restrictive measures against Russia over the war in Ukraine. Individual sanctions were imposed on a total of over 700 people from Russia, Belarus, the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, as well as over 200 Russian and Belarusian companies and organizations. In addition, Japan froze the assets of Otkritie Bank, Novikombank, Sovcombank, VTB, Rossiya Bank, Promsvyazbank, VEB.RF, Sberbank and Alfa Bank, as well as about 40 Russian organizations and companies.

The banned export list includes more than 400 items, including semiconductors, maritime and aviation security equipment, telecommunications equipment, communications equipment, military products including weapons, software, oil refinery equipment, trucks, dump trucks, bulldozers, railway locomotives, machinery for processing and other electrical equipment used in industry. There is a ban on the delivery of luxury goods to Russia, including cars worth more than 6 million yen (about $49,000), as well as a ban on the import of gold from Russia.

On his birthday, Vladimir Putin meets with his colleagues from the CIS

On his birthday today, when he turns 70, Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet his colleagues from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), TASS reported.

The informal meeting will take place in the Constantine Palace near St. Petersburg. Usually, one regular and one informal meeting of the Council of CIS Heads of State are convened during the year. Last year, the informal meeting took place on December 28 in St. Petersburg, and the official meeting, which took place via video link due to the coronavirus pandemic, was held on October 15.

As noted by Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the October 7 talks will be an important step in the preparation of the CIS summit in Astana next week. From October 12 to 14, the capital of Kazakhstan - the country chairing the CIS for this year - will host the CIS summits, the Conference on Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) and the meeting of the heads of state of the countries of the Central Asia and Russia.

According to British intelligence, half of Ukrainian tanks are trophies

Half of the tanks in the Ukrainian army are war trophies from Russian units withdrawing from the combat zones. This is according to British military intelligence's daily summary of the war in Ukraine, published on Friday.

"Ukraine has captured at least 440 Russian main battle tanks and around 650 other armored vehicles since the beginning of the invasion. More than half of Ukraine's tank fleet now potentially consists of captured vehicles," the Ministry of Defense in London reported in Twitter.

"The failure of Russian crews to destroy serviceable equipment before withdrawing or surrendering underscores their poor level of training and low levels of combat discipline," the intelligence analysis said.

(1/4) Re-purposed captured Russian equipment now makes up a large proportion of Ukraine’s military hardware.

— Ministry of Defence ???????? (@DefenceHQ) October 7, 2022

It predicts that due to the demoralization of occupation units and the strain of battlefield losses, the number of trophy weapons in the Ukrainian army is likely to continue to increase.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced late Thursday that Ukrainian forces had captured more than 500 square kilometers of territory and dozens of settlements in the southern Kherson region alone since October 1.

In his regular video address to the Ukrainians, he said that in the last 24 hours new military successes have been achieved in the east, but without giving further details, Reuters reports.

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