MOSCOW-President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday suspended Moscow’s participation in a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Washington during a speech in which he accused the West of escalating the Ukraine conflict.
In his scathing state of the nation address to Russian lawmakers, Putin also vowed that Russia would keep fighting in Ukraine ahead of the first anniversary of the military campaign. Accusing Western powers of wanting “to be done with us once and for all”, he said Russia was “forced” to suspend the New START treaty but would not pull out of the agreement altogether.
The 2010 treaty is the last major US-Russia arms control pact still in force but it has frayed in recent years, with accusations from Washington that Moscow was not complying with it. Putin was speaking a day after US President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv in which he promised additional arms deliveries for Ukraine, and ahead of a speech by Biden in Warsaw. Referring to the conflict in Ukraine, Putin said: “step by step, we will carefully and systematically solve the aims that face us”.
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NATO, EU slam Russia’s suspension of nuclear arms treaty
NATO’s chief and the EU’s top diplomat warned Tuesday that Russia’s suspension of a nuclear treaty with the United States marked the end of Europe’s post-Cold War arms control architecture. “I regret today’s decision by Russia to suspend its participation in the New START treaty,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference with EU foreign policy head Josep Borrell and Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. “Over the last years Russia has violated and walked away from key arms control agreements. With today’s decision on New START the whole arms control architecture has been dismantled,” Stoltenberg said.Borrell said their meeting in Brussels was a historic symbol of the West’s unity and determination to protect Kyiv from Russia’s aggression.