CNN
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Russian President Vladimir Putin punctured the balloon of hope in his trade union speech on Tuesday. He did not declare martial law or announce a new wave of military mobilization. He almost reused the same line about why he invaded Ukraine a year ago. And he didn’t outline a vision of how the war he started would end.
But Putin has provided at least one headline by announcing that Russia is suspending its participation in the New START Nuclear Weapons Reduction Treaty.
“The US and NATO openly state that their goal is the strategic defeat of Russia,” he said. “And then are we supposed to move them around our (nuclear) facility?”
Putin addresses complaints from US officials that Russia is violating the New START, the last arms control agreement to control the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals, by refusing US inspections of its nuclear facilities. Was.
“They want to inflict a strategic defeat on us and climb all over our nuclear facilities,” Putin said. “Today, I would like to announce that Russia is suspending its participation in the START Treaty.”
Kremlin leaders hastily added that Russia would not withdraw from the treaty entirely, but only suspend its participation. But he preceded his remarks on arms control with a lengthy commentary on the alleged purpose of Western powers providing aid to Ukraine.
Putin said, “I don’t know what to call this other than an absurd drama. We know that NATO is complicit in the Kiev regime’s attack on our air base. The drones used in the WWII have been outfitted and modernized by NATO experts and now they want to come inspect our bases?Given the current conflict, this is completely seems nonsense to me.”
In a sense, suspending the New START treaty continues the uneasy status quo. Under the agreement, the United States and Russia are allowed to conduct inspections of each other’s weapons facilities to verify compliance, but those inspections have been on hold since 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. rice field.
So Putin’s speech was nothing new. In his one-hour, 45-minute speech of rambling, he offered several heated options from a menu of grievances against the West and repeated the same justification for all-out war against Ukraine.
In fact, his speech was reminiscent of the television speech aired on February 24, 2022 announcing the launch of Russia’s so-called “special military operation”, the invasion of Ukraine. 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.
“I want to repeat, they are the ones who started the war,” Putin said. “And we’ve continued to use force to stop it.”
Such remarks seem to be aimed at a domestic audience whose sense of normalcy has been subverted in many respects. and promised that Russia would establish a special fund to provide support to the families of veterans and soldiers killed in action in Ukraine and to strengthen their social interests.
The Russian president also indirectly addressed some of the class grievances that returned to the Kremlin following the partial mobilization last fall. Putin has promised that rotations in Ukraine will be more predictable and that soldiers will be given much-needed leave.
“Serving in special operations zones, as we all know this very well, is associated with enormous physical and psychological stress, with daily risks to health and life,” he said. “Therefore, for all participants in special military operations, including mobilized persons, generally all military personnel, and volunteers, excluding travel time, at least 14 days, at least six months. We believe it is necessary to establish regular vacations lasting one, so that each soldier may have the opportunity to visit family members and get to know relatives and friends.”
This statement can be interpreted differently. Soldiers should expect some rest, as Russians need to settle down for a long war.
The reaction from many Ukrainians to Putin’s speech, for those who could even pay attention, was completely negative.
Mikhailo Podoljak, an adviser to the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, suggested that Putin had lost to the conspiracy.
“President Putin has publicly shown his indifference and confusion,” he said on Twitter. “Because there are ‘Nazis, Martians, conspiracy theories’ everywhere.”
This is a mocking assessment, but in many ways an accurate assessment. The main point the Russians took from Putin’s speech was that they were surrounded by enemies, they started a war, and there was no light at the end of the “special military operations” tunnel.
