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22-02-2023
WARSAW/MOSCOW: US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday Ukraine “stands strong” a year after the Russian invasion and that Moscow would never defeat its neighbour after the Kremlin suspended a landmark nuclear arms control treaty over the West’s support for Kyiv.
Hours before Biden spoke in Poland following a surprise visit to Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed that Moscow would achieve its objectives in Ukraine and accused the West of plotting to destroy Russia.
Alleging that the United States was turning the Ukraine war into a global conflict, Putin said Russia was suspending participation in the 2010 New START treaty, its last major arms control treaty with Washington.
Putin, upping the ante in what has become the biggest confrontation with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, also announced that new strategic systems had been put on combat duty and threatened to resume nuclear tests.
Biden proclaimed “unwavering” support for Kyiv and a commitment to bolstering NATO’s eastern flank facing Russia, while rejecting Moscow’s contention that the West was plotting to attack Russia.
“One year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of Kyiv,” Biden said at Warsaw’s Royal Castle. “I can report: Kyiv stands strong, Kyiv stands proud, it stands tall and, most important, it stands free.
“When President Putin ordered his tanks to roll into Ukraine, he thought we would roll over. He was wrong,” he said.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Putin’s suspension of its role in New START “deeply unfortunate and 
irresponsible”. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said it made the world a more dangerous place, and urged Putin to reconsider.
Signed by then-US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, the treaty caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the countries can deploy.
Due to expire in 2026, it allows each country to physically check the other’s nuclear arsenal, although tensions over Ukraine had already brought inspections to a halt.
The Russian leader said, without citing evidence, that some in Washington were considering breaking a moratorium on nuclear testing. ” … If the United States conducts tests, then we will. No one should have dangerous illusions that global strategic parity can be destroyed,” Putin said. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
