Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would suspend its participation in the last remaining major nuclear-arms-control treaty between the U.S. and Russia, and vowed to continue the military campaign in Ukraine as the diplomatic gap between Moscow and the West widened.
He also said that if the U.S. were to test new types of nuclear weapons, Russia would do the same.
Approximately 90 percent of all nuclear warheads are owned by Russia and the United States, who each have around 4,000 warheads in their military stockpiles; no other nuclear-armed state sees a need for more than a few hundred nuclear weapons for national security.
Russia is reporting that have 5,977 nuclear weapons.
The Russian leader made his remarks during his State of the Nation address, which the Russian constitution requires him to deliver annually.
In line with various analysts’ opinions that Putin’s health is in decline, the Russian leader has not delivered a speech for nearly two years since April 2021. He also postponed his traditional end-of-year press conference in December.
Putin repeated his claim that the administration of current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “neo-Nazi” in its ideology and denounced “perversion” and “spiritual catastrophe” in the West, spending particular time condemning the Anglican Church for allegedly considering “the idea of a gender-neutral God.”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine – which launched in 2014 but escalated through a “special military operation” announced on February 24, 2022, to a full-scale national attack on the country, took up most of Putin’s speaking time.
Putin insisted that his administration “did everything possible, really everything possible to solve this problem by peaceful means,” but Western powers did not allow Ukraine to accept such a resolution. He did not appear to include Russia’s invasion and colonization of Crimea in 2014, which received no significant response from the administration of then-President Barack Obama, in his analysis of the ongoing invasion of the country.
“I want to repeat this: it was they who unleashed the war, and we used force to stop it,” Putin asserted.
Putin announced an end to the New START agreement, a treaty passed under Obama.
“I am forced to announce today that Russia is suspending its participation in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty,” he declared, accusing the United States and the greater West of attempting to eliminate the existence of Russia as a whole.
“The West uses Ukraine as a ram against Russia,” Putin said.
“The Western elite does not conceal their goal, which is to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. It means to finish us forever and grow a local conflict into global opposition,” Putin warned.
“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,” the former KGB agent added.
New START took effect in February 2011 that extended through 2026.
It limits the number of nuclear weapons both sides can deploy and forces the U.S. and Russia to, at least on paper, maintain an equal number of strategic nuclear weapons.
The treaty requires limits of:
700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments;
1,550 nuclear warheads on deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments (each such heavy bomber is counted as one warhead toward this limit);
800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and heavy bombers equipped with nuclear armaments.
Former President Donald Trump was an outspoken critic of the New START agreement, reportedly raising the issue in his first call with Putin as president in 2017 and publicly demanding a new agreement that also includes China. Both China and Russia enthusiastically rejected including China in the proposal.
“It’s a one-sided deal like all other deals we make. It’s a one-sided deal. It gave them things that we should have never allowed,” Trump said in 2017. “Just another bad deal that the country made, whether it’s START, whether it’s the Iran deal, which is one of the bad deals ever made. Our country only made bad deals, we don’t make good deals. So we’re going to start making good deals.”
Putin claimed in his speech on Tuesday that American government officials were considering restarting nuclear tests, necessitating the suspension of the agreement. He did not name any officials allegedly considering this or offer any evidence for his allegation.
“In this situation, [in the wake of the ideas in the United States to conduct nuclear weapon tests], the Defense Ministry of Russia and Rosatom should be ready for testing Russian nuclear weapons,” Putin declared. “Naturally, we will not be the first to do that but if the United States conducts the tests, we will also carry them out.”
Elsewhere in his remarks, Putin bemoaned the “spiritual catastrophe” of the West.
“They distort historical facts and constantly attack our culture, the Russian Orthodox Church, and other traditional religions of our country,” Putin claimed. “Look at what they do with their own peoples: the destruction of the family, cultural and national identity, perversion, and the abuse of children are declared the norm. And priests are forced to bless same-sex marriages.”
“As it became known, the Anglican Church plans to consider the idea of a gender-neutral God … Millions of people in the West understand they are being led to a real spiritual catastrophe,” he added.