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Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow was “suspending” participation in the New START nuclear nonproliferation agreement with the United States, according to The New York Times.
Putin announced the decision about the last remaining arms control treaty between the countries during a state of the nation address on Tuesday.
While Putin said Russia would not completely withdraw from the treaty, he said that NATO officials would not be allowed to inspect the country’s nuclear arsenal, according to The Washington Post.
The New START treaty went into effect in 2011 and has been extended through Feb. 4, 2026.
According to the U.S. State Department, “Under the treaty, the United States and the Russian Federation had seven years to meet the treaty’s central limits on strategic offensive arms (by February 5, 2018) and are then obligated to maintain those limits for as long as the treaty remains in force.”
Putin blamed the U.S. for the decision to suspend the treaty.
“Our relations have degraded and that’s completely and utterly the U.S.’s fault,” Putin said in the speech.
“If the U.S. conducts tests, then so will we,” Putin said. “Nobody should have any illusions that global strategic parity can be destroyed.”
Putin spoke for about one hour and 45 minutes, Reuters reported. The speech came a day after President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv and delivered not only words of encouragement for the country in its fight against Russia, but promised more military aid for Ukraine.
“The elites of the West do not hide their purpose. But they also cannot fail to realize that it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield,” Putin told his country’s political and military elite.
Speaking just short of Friday’s one-year anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian leader described the invasion as a “local conflict,” and claimed the US and other Ukrainian allies were threatening Russia’s existence.
“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,” Putin said.
“They intend to transform a local conflict into a phase of global confrontation. This is exactly how we understand it all and we will react accordingly because in this case, we are talking about the existence of our country.”