Russian President Vladimir Putin punctured the balloon of anticipation in his state of the union speech Tuesday. He didn’t declare martial law or announce a new wave of military mobilization; he recycled the same lines about his rationale for invading Ukraine nearly one year ago; and he outlined no vision of how the war he launched might end.
But Putin did offer at least one headline, announcing that Russia is suspending its participation in the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty.“The US and NATO openly state that their goal is the strategic defeat of Russia,” he said. “And what, after that are we just supposed to let them to t
Putin was referring to complaints by US officials that Russia was violating New START, the last remaining arms-control agreement governing the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals, by refusing to allow US inspections of its nuclear facilities.
“They want to inflict a strategic defeat on us and climb all over our nuclear facilities,” Putin said. “So I’d like to make the announcement today that Russia is suspending its participation in the START Treaty.”
The Kremlin leader hastened to add that Russia is not withdrawing from the treaty entirely, only suspending participation. But he prefaced his remarks on arms-control with a lengthy tirade about the West’s alleged aims in providing aid to Ukraine.
“I don’t know how to call this other than a theater of the absurd,” Putin said. “We know that NATO is complicit in the attempts by the Kyiv regime to strike our air bases. And the drones used for this have been equipped and modernized by NATO specialists. And now they want to come and inspect our bases? Given the current confrontation, this just sounds like complete nonsense.”
Suspending the New START Treaty in some ways continues an uneasy status quo. Under the agreement, the US and Russia are permitted to conduct inspections of each other’s weapons sites to verify compliance, but those inspections had been on hold since 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Putin’s speech, then, was nothing new. In his rambling, one-hour-and-45-minute address, he offered some warmed-over options from a menu of complaints about the West and rehashed the same justifications for his full-scale war on Ukraine.
His address, in fact, was reminiscent of the television speech that aired on February 24, 2022, announcing the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s so-called “special military operation.” Putin repeated the same baseless claim that Moscow had no choice but to use force against Ukraine. And he doubled down on blaming the West for the conflict.
وقال بوتين: «أريد أن أكرر: إنهم هم الذين أطلقوا العنان للحرب». واستخدمنا وما زلنا نستخدم القوة لوقفها". يبدو أن مثل هذه التصريحات موجهة إلى جمهور محلي شهد من نواح كثيرة أن إحساسهم بالحياة الطبيعية قد انقلب رأسا على عقب. لذلك لعب بوتين أيضا دور الزعيم المطمئن في زمن الحرب ، حيث وقف دقيقة صمت على الجنود الذين قتلوا.
في أوكرانيا ، ووعد بأن روسيا ستنشئ صندوقا خاصا لتقديمه