Russia suspends key nuclear treaty with US

By Stefan J. Bos

Russian President Putin used his annual State of the Nation speech on Tuesday to announce he was suspending Russia’s participation in the New START Treaty with the United States.

New START is the last remaining nuclear arms reduction deal between Washington and Moscow. It was signed in 2010 and extended for five years in 2021.

It limits each side to 1,550 long-range nuclear warheads.

Putin claimed Russia’s suspension of the treaty was needed as the US and its allies wanted Russia, in his words, “to suffer a strategic defeat” and meddle with its nuclear facilities.

In a reaction, NATO military alliance secretary general Jens Stoltenberg condemned the move saying that “more nuclear weapons and fewer arms control makes the world more dangerous.”

Claims of Western guilt

President Putin spoke in Moscow in an address to legislators and leaders ahead of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

He blamed the West for the war by allegedly supporting attacks in eastern Ukraine, where many Russians live, and other actions.

“They unilaterally broke fundamental agreements that maintained peace on the planet,” Putin said. “And finally, in 2021, we officially sent our draft resolution to the United States and NATO regarding security on all important points. But on all important points, we virtually got a point-blank denial,” the Russian leader claimed.

“I want to repeat that it was them [the West] who were guilty or culpable for the war. And we are using a force to stop it,” Putin added.

Biden in Ukraine

However, earlier in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, President Joe Biden accused Russia of provoking Europe’s largest armed conflict since the Second World War by invading a sovereign nation. 

“We mourn alongside the families of those who’ve been lost to the brutal and unjust war. We know that there’ll be very difficult days and weeks and years ahead,” Biden said, standing next to Ukraine’s president on Monday.

“But Russia’s aim was to wipe Ukraine off the map. Putin’s war of conquest is failing. Russia’s military has lost half the territory it once occupied,” Biden stressed.

He also noted that, “Young, talented Russians are fleeing by the tens of thousands, not wanting to come back to Russia.”

Biden was due to give a similar message in neighboring Poland on Tuesday to mark the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine after announcing another half a billion dollars in military support to the war-torn nation.