MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended Moscow’s participation in the final nuclear arms control deal with the United States and announced the move in a bitter speech on Tuesday, where he made clear his strategy in the war in Ukraine. Will not change. In his long-delayed address to the nation, Putin cast his country and Ukraine as victims of Western double standards and said it was Russia, not Ukraine, fighting for its survival.
“We are not fighting the Ukrainian people,” Putin said in a speech on Friday, days before the first anniversary of the war.
“The Ukrainian people have become hostages of the Kiev regime and its Western masters, who have effectively taken over the country,” he said.
The speech reiterated grievances that the Russian leader has offered as justification for the widely maligned military operation, while pledging no military let-up in a conflict that has reignited fears of a new Cold War Is.
On top of that, Putin moved swiftly by announcing that Moscow would suspend its participation in the so-called New START treaty.
The accord, signed by the US and Russia in 2010, limits the number of long-range nuclear weapons that can be deployed by either side and limits the use of missiles carrying nuclear warheads.
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Putin also said that Russia should be prepared to resume nuclear weapons testing if the US does so, a move that would end a global ban on such tests since the Cold War era.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described Moscow’s decision as “really unfortunate and very irresponsible”.
“We will be watching carefully to see what Russia actually does,” he said during a visit to Greece. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and advanced rapidly towards Kiev, apparently hoping to quickly overrun the capital.
But stubborn resistance from the Ukrainian army turned back Moscow’s troops ‘backed by Western arms’. While Ukraine has recovered many of the territories initially seized by Russia, the two sides are locked in a tit-for-tat fight in others.
The war has reignited the old Russia-West divide, revived the NATO alliance, and posed the biggest threat to Putin’s more than two decades of rule.
US President Joe Biden, following a surprise visit to Kiev, was in Poland on Tuesday on a mission to cement that Western unity and has a speech of his own planned. Observers were expected to dig into Putin’s address to gauge how the Russian leader sees the conflict, where he might take it and how it might end.
While the constitution mandates that the president deliver an annual speech, Putin never did in 2022, as his military entered Ukraine and suffered repeated setbacks.
Much of the speech covered old ground, as Putin offered his own version of recent history, rejecting arguments by the Ukrainian government that it needed Western help to thwart Russian military takeovers.
“The Western elites are not trying to hide their goals, to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia,” Putin said in a speech broadcast by all state TV channels.
“They intend to turn a local conflict into a global confrontation,” he said.
He said Russia was ready to respond because “it would be a matter of our country’s existence”.
He has repeatedly portrayed NATO’s expansion to include countries close to Russia as a potential threat to his country.
Italy’s Premier Giorgia Meloni, who was in Ukraine on Tuesday, said she expected Putin to take a different approach.
“What we heard this morning was propaganda we already know,” Meloni said in English.
They say (Russia) employed diplomacy to avoid conflict, but the truth is that there is someone who is the aggressor and someone who is defending.
Putin denies any wrongdoing, even as the Kremlin’s forces in Ukraine attacked civilian targets, including hospitals, and have been widely accused of war crimes.
On the ground Tuesday, the Ukrainian military reported that Russian forces bombed the southern cities of Kherson and Ochakiv while Putin spoke, killing six people.
President Volodymyr Zelensky lamented that the Russian military was “again mercilessly killing the civilian population.” Many observers speculated that Putin’s speech would address Moscow’s fallout with the West, and Putin began with strong words for countries that have provided significant military support to Kiev and against supplying them with long-range weapons. warned.
“They started the war. And we are using force to end it,” Putin told a crowd of lawmakers, government officials and soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
Putin also accused the West of targeting Russian culture, religion and values because it “knows that it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield.”
Similarly, he asserted that Western sanctions would have no effect, adding that they “have achieved nothing and will achieve nothing.” Underlining the anticipation of the speech, some state TV channels have started the countdown for the event starting Monday.
Reflecting the Kremlin’s clampdown on free speech and the press, this year it barred media from ‘unfriendly’ countries, the list of which includes those from the US, the UK and the European Union. Peskov said journalists from those countries would be able to cover the speech by watching the broadcast.
He had earlier told reporters that the delay in the speech had to do with Putin’s “work schedule”, but Russian media reports linked it to failings of the Russian military. The Russian president postponed the first nation’s address in 2017.
Last year, the Kremlin also canceled two other big annual events – Putin’s press conferences and a highly scripted phone-marathon where people ask the president questions.
Analysts expected Putin’s speech to be tough in the wake of Biden’s visit to Kiev on Monday. In his own speech later Tuesday, Biden is expected to highlight the commitment of the central European country and other allies to Ukraine over the past year.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden’s address would not be “a face-off” with Putin.
“This is not a rhetorical contest with anyone else,” he said.