Russia suspends only remaining nuclear deal with US

Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin showed no signs of chang­ing the Krem­lin’s strat­e­gy in the bloody war in Ukraine on Tues­day, height­en­ing ten­sions with the West by sus­pend­ing Moscow’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the only remain­ing nuclear arms con­trol deal with the Unit­ed States.

In his long-await­ed State of the Union address, Putin por­trayed his coun­try and Ukraine as vic­tims of the West­’s dou­ble-deal­ing, say­ing it was Rus­sia, not Ukraine, fight­ing for its rai­son d’etre.

“We are not fight­ing the Ukraini­ans,” Putin said in a speech ahead of the war’s first anniver­sary on Fri­day. “The Ukrain­ian peo­ple are being held hostage by the regime in Kiev and its West­ern rulers, effec­tive­ly occu­py­ing the coun­try,” he said.

The speech echoed a num­ber of griev­ances that Russ­ian lead­ers have often put for­ward as jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for wide­ly con­demned mil­i­tary oper­a­tions, and called for mil­i­tary stead­fast­ness in a con­flict that has reignit­ed fears of a new Cold War.

In fact, Putin made a sud­den change in his demeanor by announc­ing that Moscow would cease to par­tic­i­pate in the so-called New START Treaty. The treaty, signed by the Unit­ed States and Rus­sia in 2010, lim­its the num­ber of long-range nuclear war­heads each side can deploy and the use of mis­siles capa­ble of car­ry­ing atom­ic weapons.

Putin also said that if the US resumed nuclear test­ing, Rus­sia would be ready to do so. The move ends a glob­al ban on nuclear test­ing that has been in place since the Cold War.

Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine on Feb­ru­ary 24, 2022, appar­ent­ly hop­ing to push towards Kiev and quick­ly cap­ture the cap­i­tal. How­ev­er, fierce resis­tance from Ukrain­ian forces backed by West­ern weapons pushed Moscow’s forces back. Ukraine has regained much of the ter­ri­to­ry orig­i­nal­ly occu­pied by Rus­sia, but else­where the two sides are engaged in a tug-of-war.

The war has rekin­dled a long­stand­ing rival­ry between Rus­sia and the West, revi­tal­ized the NATO alliance and cre­at­ed the great­est threat to Putin’s rule in more than two decades. Fresh off a sur­prise vis­it to Kiev, US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden was sched­uled to deliv­er his own speech in Poland on Tues­day on a mis­sion to solid­i­fy West­ern ties.

Observers are expect­ed to scru­ti­nize Putin’s speech on how Rus­si­a’s lead­ers view the con­flict, where it will go and how it will end. The con­sti­tu­tion requires the pres­i­dent to give a speech every year, but Putin did­n’t give a sin­gle speech in 2022.

Putin has giv­en his own account of his recent his­to­ry, dis­miss­ing the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­men­t’s claim that it needs help from the West to stop Rus­si­a’s mil­i­tary takeover.

The West­ern elite make no attempt to hide their pur­pose of inflict­ing a ‘strate­gic defeat’ on Rus­sia,” Putin said, broad­cast on all chan­nels of state tele­vi­sion. “They intend to turn local con­flicts into glob­al conflicts.

He added that Rus­sia was ready to respond as it was “relat­ed to the very exis­tence of our coun­try”. Putin has repeat­ed­ly described NATO’s expan­sion to include coun­tries close to Rus­sia as an exis­ten­tial threat to his country.

Putin has denied any wrong­do­ing, despite Ukrain­ian Krem­lin forces attack­ing civil­ians, includ­ing hos­pi­tals, wide­ly denounced as war crimes. Local­ly, heavy fight­ing and artillery shelling con­tin­ued on Tues­day in east­ern and south­ern Ukraine. At least six peo­ple have died in the last 24 hours, the Ukrain­ian pres­i­den­t’s office said in the morning.

Pavlo Kir­ilenko, the gov­er­nor of Ukraine, which occu­pies part of Donet­sk, said: “Life for cit­i­zens in this region has become hell. They are con­stant­ly under Russ­ian fire and sur­vive with­out water or electricity.”

Many observers expect­ed Putin’s speech to address Moscow’s con­flict with the West. Putin first issued harsh words to coun­tries that have pro­vid­ed sig­nif­i­cant mil­i­tary sup­port to Kiev, warn­ing them not to sup­ply longer-range weapons.