The full functioning of the Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty (START) has been “interrupted” by negative factors that have arisen through the fault of the United States. Thus, the Russian Foreign Ministry commented President Vladimir Putin’s decision to suspend the country’s participation in this agreement, announced today in a message to parliament.
The Russian Foreign Ministry accused the United States of “destructive actions”, pursuing “a line towards an overall weakening of the security of the Russian Federation and the political and economic ‘suffocation’ of our country” and an open will to inflict a “strategic defeat” on this subject.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Washington’s “extreme hostility”, escalating confrontation, “fuelling of tensions” and “open opening of a malicious escalation of the conflict in Ukraine created “a fundamentally different security environment” for Moscow.
“The United States and the West it leads are trying to harm our country at every level, in every region and in every part of the world. There is every reason to assert that US policy is aimed at undermining Russia’s national security,” the Foreign Ministry said.
This, as stated in the ministry’s statement, contradicts “the parties’ commitment to the principle of indivisible security and the establishment of relations on the basis of mutual trust and cooperation”, as stated in the START, as well as other “fundamental principles and understandings” on which this agreement is based.
Thus, argues the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, since the signing of START, circumstances have changed dramatically due to the fault of the United States and “the West as a whole”, so it has become impossible to do business with them under the previous regime, including in the area of nuclear policy. The ministry statement lists specific allegations against the West Collective:
The Russian Foreign Ministry accuses NATO of conducting “joint nuclear missions” and calling for expanding the military bloc’s nuclear infrastructure to the east. Members of the alliance declared it “nuclear” and “increased emphasis on nuclear weapons in the NATO-wide conceptual guidelines”, without hiding the direction of these actions against Russia, according to the press release. The Foreign Office stressed the particular importance of the “combined nuclear arsenal factor” of the United States, France and Britain, which the ministry said “is likely to be turned against Russia”. Moscow is obliged to “take this factor into account in the process of limiting and reducing nuclear weapons, as well as when considering the future of New START,” the ministry said. Furthermore, the State Department pointed to Washington’s demonstrative and long-standing refusal to acknowledge the existence of a link between strategic offensive and strategic defensive weapons, despite being spelled out in START (and, thus , this treaty indirectly provides for the US obligation not to increase the missile defense system either quantitatively or qualitatively). The Russian Foreign Ministry also accused the American side of having fraudulently removed more than a hundred weapons from START, renaming them or declaring them converted, but without giving Russian inspectors the opportunity to verify this. Another violation of the treaty by the United States concerns attacks on Russian strategic offensive weapons facilities carried out by the “Kiev puppet regime” with “clear military-technical and information and intelligence assistance from Washington”. in order to “probe” their safety.
In the context of the alleged violations, the Russian Foreign Ministry considers the US side’s request to allow inspections of Russian facilities to be “the height of cynicism”, causing “particular perplexity” against the backdrop of sanctions that prevent bilateral inspections and compliance with other procedures provided for in the agreement.
President Vladimir Putin announced the suspension of Russia’s participation in START on February 21, 2023 in his message to the Federal Assembly. He said Moscow was aware of the direct involvement of the West “in the Kiev regime’s attempts to strike” at Russian strategic aviation bases using drones, which have been “equipped and modernized with the help of NATO specialists”.
“And now they also want to inspect our defense installations. In the current conditions of today’s confrontation, it looks like some kind of absurdity,” Putin said.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg lamented the Russian president’s decision and called for it to be reconsidered, while US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called Putin’s stance on START “very unfortunate and irresponsible”. RTVI talked about how other Western and Russian politicians reacted to what happened here.