Regarding New START, Putin said that it was not an exit but a suspension of the New START treaty. He asked Russian officials to wait for “nuclear weapons tests” if Washington conducts those tests first.
Putin accused the US of “theater of the absurd” – noting that Washington had recently accused Moscow of not allowing experts into the country to inspect nuclear defense systems. If, in times of such tension, anyone in the West seriously hopes that Russia will grant such access, that is “absurd”, Putin said. At the same time, he reiterated that Russia would not grant access to American experts because Russian inspectors were also unable to enter the United States due to Western sanctions.
IMAGO/SNA Putin during his speech at the Gostiny Dvor event center in Moscow
Putin blames UK and France
Putin justified the suspension of New START mainly with the fact that France and Great Britain, for example, were developing their nuclear arsenals and would align their nuclear potential against Russia. Putin also saw NATO statements about New START as interference and a reason to reconsider the treaty.
debate
A Year of War in Ukraine: What Stops Putin?
The Disarmament Treaty is the only remaining major arms control agreement between the US and Russia. The treaty limits both countries’ nuclear arsenals to 800 launch systems and 1,550 operational warheads each. Furthermore, it is regulated that Washington and Moscow can exchange information about their strategic nuclear arsenals and carry out up to 18 verification visits per year.
NATO recently accused Russia of violating the treaty. Russia’s refusal to allow US inspections on its territory jeopardizes the treaty’s future, sources in Brussels said in early February. Moscow, for its part, rejected these allegations at the time and blamed the United States.
APA/AFP/Sputnik/Mikhail Metzel An audience view from Putin’s perspective from the pulpit
NATO ‘increasingly concerned’
NATO urged Putin to respect New START. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg appealed to Putin in Brussels on Tuesday to “reconsider his decision and respect the treaties in force”. At the same time, Stoltenberg rejected Putin’s accusation that the West wanted to “do away with” Russia: “Nobody is attacking Russia, Russia is the aggressor,” Stoltenberg stressed at the joint appearance with Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, and the EU’s chief diplomat. Josep Borrell in Brussels.
In his speech, Putin made it clear that he was “preparing for an ongoing war”, the NATO secretary general said. “We are increasingly concerned that China might plan to provide deadly support for Russia’s war,” Stoltenberg said. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has accused Beijing of such plans.
Putin blames the West for the war in Ukraine
In his State of the Nation address, Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed the war on the West.
Putin: “Special military operation” will continue
“They started the war,” Putin said, referring to Western countries. Russia is just trying to end the fighting, Putin said. In his speech at the Gostiny Dvor event center in Moscow, the Kremlin chief again said that a “neo-Nazi regime” was in power in Ukraine, without giving further justification. The “special military operation” that Moscow calls a war will continue. “We will tackle the tasks ahead step by step, carefully and consistently,” said the 70-year-old.
According to the Kremlin chief, Russia has made efforts to resolve the problem in Donbass peacefully. But the West has prepared a different scenario, continued Putin. “They started the war. We did everything we could to stop it.” The United States unilaterally withdrew from the contracts. Even before the start of the “special military operation” in Ukraine, the Kiev government had spoken with the West about arms deliveries, Putin said without further explanation. The West has cynically betrayed its own population .
ORF’s analysis of Putin’s allegations
ORF correspondents Miriam Beller in Moscow and Ernst Gelegs in Warsaw explain reactions to Putin’s State of the Nation address and accusations against the West for starting the war in Ukraine.
“Impossible to defeat on the battlefield”
On Friday, February 24th, it will be one year since Russia officially started the war against Ukraine. Putin’s appearance was his 18th State of the Union address. The previous one was almost two years ago and took place in April 2021. Last year there were none; the head of the Kremlin explained this with a very high “dynamic of events”.
According to Putin, Russia’s existence is at stake. The West is trying to turn a local conflict into a global one, he told parliament. “It is impossible to defeat our country on the battlefield,” Putin said. He was convinced that the majority of the Russian population supports the government’s approach of “defending the Donbass”. “I want to thank the Russian people for their determination and courage.”
Putin also announced a modernization of the Russian army. “The level of equipment of Russia’s nuclear deterrent forces with the latest systems is now 91.3 percent,” Putin said. “Now, taking into account our accumulated experience, we need to reach such a high level of quality in all aspects of the Armed Forces”, he added.
Fight for the “future”
Putin also accuses the West of seeking “unlimited power”. “Western money flows to war are not decreasing,” he said. Trillions of dollars are at stake for the West. Western countries have long begun to turn Ukraine into a kind of “anti-Russia”. “The West has let the genie out of the bottle,” Putin said. “The responsibility for the escalation in Ukraine rests with Western elites.”
According to Putin, Russian troops in Ukraine are fighting for the future and the restoration of historical justice. “We will do everything to bring peace back to our country.” It is the State’s duty to support families who have lost loved ones in war. Putin pledged financial support to the families of fallen soldiers and war veterans and announced a special state fund for this purpose.
In the “new areas” there will be more social aid programs, Putin said, referring to the four annexed Ukrainian regions. These areas chose to stay with Russia – despite threats from the “Nazis”. Putin used it to refer to the Ukrainian leadership, as he had done many times before.
“The West stole our gold”
According to Putin, the Russian economy has turned out to be much stronger than the West had expected. “The West is fighting us on the economic front,” he said. But he will not succeed. The West provoked price increases and job losses, imposed sanctions to make the Russian people suffer. “They are humanists like that,” Putin said. “They want to make the people suffer to destabilize our society. But their calculations didn’t work out,” Putin said.
“The West stole our gold and our foreign exchange reserves,” Putin said, referring to Western sanctions: “But their calculations did not pan out. The Russian economy and administration turned out to be much stronger than they thought.”
Cooperation “with other countries”
According to Putin, Russia has all the necessary financial resources to ensure its national security and development, despite Western economic sanctions. In 2022, the Russian economy shrank by 2.1%, continued Putin. But unemployment is at a historically low level. Russian companies have rebuilt their supply chains.
The Russian government is working with other countries to build new payment systems and financial architectures. And after Western companies withdrew from Russia, new niches were found. The decisive factor is the structural change in the Russian economy, Putin said. “Our job is to take our economy to new frontiers.”
According to the current Putin, next year’s presidential election will be fair. It will be held “in strict accordance with the law and in compliance with all democratic constitutional procedures”, he told parliament. “We must all unite our efforts, our responsibilities and our rights to defend a supreme historic right: Russia’s right to be strong.” The deputies gave him a standing ovation.
Kiev sees Putin’s loss of reality
Ukraine views Putin’s speech as a loss of reality on the part of the Kremlin chief. According to Mykhailo Podoliak, advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Putin has lost touch with reality. “He is in a completely different reality where there is no opportunity to have a dialogue about justice and international law,” Podoliak told Portal. Russia is stuck in an impasse and everything it does makes things worse.
The US government has dismissed Putin’s accusations against the West as absurd. “Nobody is attacking Russia,” US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters on Tuesday. The notion that “Russia was somehow threatened militarily by Ukraine or anyone else” was therefore “nonsense”.
US President Joe Biden traveled to the Ukrainian capital Kiev on Monday and assured Zelenskyy of “unwavering” US support and further arms deliveries.
RIA Novosti: DDoS attacks on state media
Russian state media websites collapsed during the live broadcast of Putin’s speech. Portal journalists in several locations were temporarily unable to access the State Television and Radio Corporation (VGTRK) website and live streaming platform Smotrim during the speech.
A message on the VGTRK website stated that “technical work is being carried out”, while the Smotrim website could not be loaded. According to the state news agency RIA Novosti, the outage was the result of a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, in which a website is quickly flooded with requests, causing it to crash due to overload.