Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin says Moscow is fighting for its existence in what he called double-standard of the West, accusing the United States and European Union of igniting war in Ukraine in which Russia and Kyiv are victims
In a state-of-the-nation address on Tuesday, Putin also announced that Russia is suspending its participation in a treaty entered with US in 2010 aimed at keeping a lid on nuclear weapons expansion. The New START Treaty puts a limit to the the number of long-range nuclear warheads both countries can deploy and caps the use of missiles that can carry atomic weapons.
He threatened that Russia will commence nuclear weapon test if United States commences action in that regards.
In the speech which came 24 hours after the United States President, Joe Biden visited Ukraine, Putin exonerated Moscow from any blame nearly a year after the Kremlin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, a war that has killed tens of thousands of people.
“We aren’t fighting the Ukrainian people,” Putin said in a speech days before the war’s first anniversary on Friday. Ukraine “has become hostage of the Kyiv regime and its Western masters, which have effectively occupied the country.”
The Russian leader highlighted some of his grievances for which he had repeatedly offered justification for the widely condemned war and ignored international demands to pull back from occupied areas in Ukraine.
“Western elites aren’t trying to conceal their goals, to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ to Russia,” Putin said in the speech broadcast by all state TV channels. “They intend to transform the local conflict into a global confrontation.”
He added that Russia is prepared to respond to that as “it will be a matter of our country’s existence.”
While the Constitution mandates that the president deliver the speech annually, Putin never gave one in 2022, as his troops rolled into Ukraine and suffered repeated setbacks.
Before the speech, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Russian leader would focus on the “special military operation” in Ukraine, as Moscow calls it, and Russia’s economy and social issues.
“It’s they who have started the war. And we are using force to end it,” Putin said before an audience of lawmakers, state officials and soldiers who have fought in Ukraine.
Putin accused the west of the West of launching “aggressive information attacks” and taking aim at Russian culture, religion and values because it is aware that “it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield.”
He also accused Western nations of waging an attack on Russia’s economy with sanctions but declared but they hadn’t “achieved anything and will not achieve anything.”
