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Ahead of the one-year anniversary of what Moscow refers to as its “special military operation” in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered his annual address to the joint houses of parliament and called it a “watershed moment” for the country. During the speech on Tuesday (February 21), he also said that Moscow is suspending participation in the New START treaty, a bilateral agreement on nuclear arms control with the United States.
A “difficult, watershed moment”
The nearly two-hour speech began with the Russian president saying, “I am making this address at a time which we all know is a difficult, watershed moment for our country, a time of cardinal, irreversible changes around the world, the most important historic events that shape the future of our country and our people, when each of us bears a colossal responsibility,” as per Reuters.
Referring to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and the eastern Donbas region Putin said that since 2014 the people of Donbas “had been fighting, defending their right to live on their own land, to speak their native language”. Reports suggest that Moscow has intensified attacks on the eastern front in Ukraine and controls parts of the aforementioned region.
Speaking about the eastern Ukrainian region, the Russian president also said how the residents of Donbas have not given up “in the conditions of blockade and constant shelling, undisguised hatred on the part of the Kyiv regime. They believed and expected that Russia would come to their rescue.” Meanwhile, it has also been reported that despite Russian troops witnessing at least three significant battlefield reversals, Moscow continues to control approximately one-fifth of Ukraine.
Putin’s statement also comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in an address on Sunday claimed that Kyiv’s troops are inflicting “extraordinarily significant” losses on the Russian forces in several towns in Donbas, where the fight is said to be focused on, in the past couple of months. “The more losses Russia suffers there, in Donbas – in Bakhmut, Vuhledar, Marinka, Kreminna – the faster we will be able to end this war with Ukraine’s victory”, said Zelensky.
“They started the war”: Putin accuses the West for the conflict with Ukraine
The ongoing conflict has also been called the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West in decades. “I have already said many times that the people of Ukraine have become the hostage of the Kyiv regime and its Western overlords, who have effectively occupied this country in the political, military and economic sense”, said Putin, in his state-of-the-nation address on Tuesday.
He added that the West has “not achieved its goals anywhere and it will not”. The Russian president also accused the West and the “current regime in Kyiv” of not only escalating the ongoing conflict but also starting it as well as “increasing (the) number of victims”. According to the United Nations Office for Human Rights (OHCHR), over 8,000 civilians have been killed since the beginning of the conflict while over 13,000 have been wounded.
Additionally, nearly 18 million are in “dire” need of humanitarian assistance and 14 million are said to have been displaced in Ukraine, as per the UN report. However, the data has been called “only the tip of the iceberg” by the UN human rights chief, Volker Turk. He added, “The toll on civilians is unbearable. Amid electricity and water shortages during the cold winter months”.
Addressing Russia’s lawmakers and military elite, Putin went on to allege that the West was threatening Moscow’s very existence with the Ukraine conflict. “The Western elites do not conceal their goals…It is a direct quote – to bring Russia a strategic defeat. What does it mean? What is it for us? It means to end us, once and for all. It means they plan to turn a local conflict into a global confrontation. We understand it exactly like that. And we will react to it accordingly,” said Putin, as per Reuters.
The Russian president also spoke about the West has not succeeded in defeating the country’s economy since “those who initiated the sanctions (against Russia) have punished themselves, caused price increases, job losses, business closures and an energy crisis in their countries.”
He added, “And they tell their own citizens, and we hear that: that the Russians are to blame for everything. Which means did they use against us in this aggression of sanctions?” As per a report by Statista published on Tuesday, territories and organisations across the world have imposed 10,608 restrictions on Russian individuals, 3,431 list-based sanctions, and 492 sanctions against institutions. The data was calculated starting from February 22, 2022, which is two days prior to the beginning of the invasion to February 10, 2023.
During his address, the Russian president also went on to say that the “anti-Russian sanctions are only a tool, but the goal – as they themselves declare…is to make our citizens suffer.” In 2022, the Russian economy contracted by 2.1 per cent, reported the government-run statistics agency Rosstat, on Monday (February 20). While many have questioned the authenticity of the figures which were published a day before Putin was due to deliver the state-of-the-nation address, Moscow’s economy was also called resilient in the face of Western sanctions and prior estimates which projected bigger contractions.
Putin suspends New START treaty
During his speech, on Tuesday, the Russian president announced the suspension of the New START treaty with the US which limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads that Washington and Moscow can deploy. The treaty in question also caps the delivery of the deployment of land and submarine-based missiles and bombers by the two countries.
“In the beginning of February this year there was a statement from the North Atlantic alliance demanding that Russia ‘returns to the Strategic Arms Treaty’ as they call it, including allowing inspections of our nuclear defence facilities. I don’t even know what to call it (the request for inspections). It’s a theatre of the absurd,” said Putin, as per Reuters.
On the other hand, their repeated requests to inspect some US objects have been declined on “formal grounds. We can’t properly inspect anything on that side,” he added. Furthermore, the Russian president also acknowledged that Russia-US relations have “deteriorated” and that Washington is fully responsible for this.
He also accused the West of wanting to “inflict a strategic defeat on us and sneak into our nuclear facilities.” “In this regard, I am forced to announce today that Russia is suspending its participation in the strategic offensive arms treaty,” said Putin towards the end of his speech to the lawmakers present at the joint session of the parliament.
Furthermore, he said that in the current situation, Russia’s ministry of defence and Rosatom should make sure that Moscow is “ready to test its nuclear weapons”. However, he said that they will not do it first but if the US conducts its test then Moscow will too, adding that “no one should be under dangerous illusions that global strategic parity can be destroyed.”
On the other hand, the US has previously accused Russia of violating the treaty by not allowing inspections on its territory. This has sparked fears of a nuclear conflict as Moscow has supposedly made veiled threats since the beginning of the conflict. Notably, the two nuclear-armed nations account for about 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear heads, as per Reuters.
What is the New START treaty?
As mentioned earlier, the treaty limits Russia and the US’ nuclear arsenal while the countries have also committed to deploying no more than 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads and a maximum of 700 long-range missiles and bombers. Additionally, every year, each side is allowed to conduct up to 18 inspections of strategic nuclear weapons sites, in order to ensure that the other side has not breached the terms of the treaty.
The treaty was signed in 2010 by former US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev and came into effect a year later. In 2021, it was extended for five more years when incumbent President Joe Biden took office. Notably, the aforementioned inspections had been halted in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and while the talks of resuming them were to take place in Egypt last year Moscow postponed them. Since then neither side has decided on a new date.
(With inputs from agencies)
