President Announces Russia “Suspends Participation” in START-3 Strategic Arms Treaty and Orders Resumption of Nuclear Tests
After almost two years without appearing before both Houses of Parliament, since his previous speech took place on April 21, 2021, President Vladimir Putin lashed out once again on Tuesday against the West and the “neo-Nazi regime” in Kiev. Flanked by four Russian flags on each side of the podium, the president repeated during his speech the same arguments that he has been using since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and fueled the war in Donbas by sending weapons and men, but he also issued a deep-seated warning . In clear response to the Munich Conference and the visit to Kiev by his US counterpart, Joe Biden, the head of the Kremlin has ordered the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Rosatom agency “to guarantee preparations to carry out tests of our nuclear weapons, if the United States United does it first.”
In practice, this means that Moscow does not withdraw, but does freeze its participation in the pact signed in 2010 against the proliferation of nuclear weapons START-3; the only agreement that remained in force with the United States to contain and mitigate the atomic threat. It was originally signed by Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev in Prague. The terms of this treaty, which paradoxically was renewed in 2021 between the two superpowers, limits the capacity of their nuclear arsenals to 1,550 long-range warheads and establishes a schedule for mutual inspections of the facilities. A couple of weeks ago, Washington accused Moscow of hindering these inspections. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has reacted immediately and asked the Kremlin to reconsider his position. After the last renewal, START-3 was to continue for five more years in force.
The president remains unchanged, with the same narrative justifying his offensive in Ukraine. In the 105 minutes that his speech lasted, he has not said anything new to what has already been stated since the beginning of the war, a year ago now. “The special military operation – the name by which the authorities refer to the war – began to protect the Russian Federation and eliminate the neo-Nazi threat (…) Russia, step by step, will constantly solve the tasks it faces » on this ground, Putin warned those gathered in the Gostini Dvor, a central historic building that has hosted Kremlin party congresses in the past.
Deputies, senators, members of the Government, oligarchs and a select group of Russian soldiers supposedly arrived from the Ukrainian front were present. “Each of us has a huge responsibility. Since 2014, Donbas has been defending his right to live on his own land and speak his own language, he believed and hoped that Russia would come to the rescue,” he launched to applause from an audience that rose several times to increasingly prolonged ovations. .
The top Russian leader assured that “we did everything possible to solve the problem by peaceful means. But behind our backs a different scenario was being prepared. The promises of Western rulers turned out to be cruel lies.” “The US and NATO have set up secret biological bases and laboratories near our borders.”
In his words, “they destroyed Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria and Libya. They are used to being allowed to do anything. Western elites have become a symbol of total lies and lack of principles. In a desperate and weakly argued speech, according to the Ukrainian Telegram channels, Putin maintains that “we have always defended the position that there should be no division in the world between civilized countries and the rest. We were open, sincerely willing to dialogue, but as a response we received the expansion of NATO and the deployment of military contingents. The entire planet is littered with US bases.”
«In December 2021, we proposed a project on security guarantees. But in all sections he was rejected. The threat grew, the information that arrived left no doubt that, by February 2022, Kiev was preparing a punitive operation in Donbas (…) It was they who started the war, we resorted to force to stop it, “he declared, warning that “the more Western long-range weapons systems reach Ukraine, the more we will be forced to move the threat away from our border” by occupying more and more Ukrainian territory.
In his opinion, “the responsibility for fueling the conflict falls entirely on the West and the kyiv regime. The West is using Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia and as a training ground.” “We are not at war with the people of Ukraine. He himself became a hostage of the kyiv regime and the Western masters who occupied the country,” he stressed.
“At the recent Munich conference, there were endless accusations against Russia to make everyone forget what the West has done (…) More than 900,000 people died as a result of the wars that the United States has unleashed since 2001,” Putin said and He assured that “the elites of the West do not hide their objectives: to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, which means ending us forever. They want to transform a local conflict into a global confrontation. We understand this and will respond accordingly.”
Elections in 2024
The second part of the speech has resembled, according to Russian analysts, the program with which Putin intends to run for re-election in 2024 with the same promises of economic development that he has been repeating in the 23 years he has been in power. “The 2024 presidential elections will be conducted in strict accordance with the law and observing democratic procedures,” he told lawmakers.
He then returned to the issue of confrontation with the West and announced that Russia “unilaterally suspends its participation in the Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty-3” (START-3). The Russian president qualified that “it is not about the withdrawal of the treaty, but only the suspension of participation in it”, which opens the door to restarting nuclear tests. “Russia will respond to any challenge, we are a united people. The truth is with us”, were the words with which he ended his speech, hinting that there are hardly any loopholes that allow relations with the West and Kiev to be reestablished in order to reach an agreement that puts an end to the conflict in Ukraine.
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