The administration of the previous US president, Joe Biden, acted irresponsibly by effectively shutting off communication with Russia, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said.

Testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, the diplomat said that Russia possesses the “largest strategic weapon stockpile in the world and one of the largest [in] tactical nuclear weapons.”

With this in mind, “there has to be some level of communication between the United States and Moscow,” irrespective of Ukraine, he insisted.

According to Rubio, “it’s frankly irresponsible to not have the two biggest nuclear powers on the planet communicating, which was the case for three years” under the Biden administration. He added that the mere fact that Washington and Moscow talk to each other does not automatically mean that the two are “going to be allies or friendly.”

However, communication between major players in the international arena is key in order to “prevent miscalculation and war,” the US secretary of state concluded.

Despite being repeatedly pressed by Democratic representative Bill Keating to call Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal, Rubio refused to do so, explaining that “we can’t end the war [in Ukraine] without talking to Mr Putin.”

In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity in early March, the top diplomat acknowledged that the Ukraine conflict is a “proxy war between nuclear powers – the United States, helping Ukraine – and Russia.” The Kremlin has long described the conflict in similar terms.

In another interview the previous month, Rubio pointed out that “even in the worst days of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union maintained communication.”

“Whether we like it or not, Russia is a power, a global power,” he stated, emphasizing that dialogue is absolutely necessary to prevent “dangerous confrontations.”

Around the same time, US President Donald Trump claimed that “if we would have had [the Biden] administration for another year, you would have been in World War III, and now it’s not going to happen.”