(Daily Mail) The U.S. on Tuesday slammed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to suspend participation in a nuclear arms control treaty as ‘irresponsible.’
With President Joe Biden in Warsaw for talks with Polish leaders after a surprise trip to Kyiv, Putin used a long-delayed state-of-the-nation to rail against the West.
He announced he was ending cooperation with the New START Treaty, triggering a swift U.S. response.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the decision ‘deeply unfortunate and irresponsible.’
‘We’ll be watching carefully to see what Russia actually does, of course, to make sure that, in any event, we are postured appropriately for the security of our country and our allies,’ he told reporters in Athens, Greece.
President Joe Biden is welcomed to Warsaw by Polish President Andrzej Duda (right)
President Vladimir Putin of Russia railed against the West in a speech on Tuesday. ‘It’s they who have started the war. And we are using force to end it,’ he told an audience of lawmakers’
The back and forth puts the global focus on eastern Europe, as Biden prepares to go head-to-head with Putin delivering his own speech on Tuesday evening in Warsaw.
He met with Polish President Andrzej Duda at the presidential palace, where he set out once again the United States’ dedication to European security and to Ukraine.
‘We have to have security in Europe,’ he said. ‘It’s that basic, that simple, that consequential.’
He talked about his visit to Poland last year, soon after Russia invaded Ukraine.
‘A year later, I would argue that NATO is stronger than it’s ever been,’ he said. ‘As I told President Zelensky while we spoke in Kyiv yesterday I can proudly say that our support for Ukraine remains unwavering.’
A day earlier he generated global headlines with a surprise visit to Kyiv, much to Moscow’s fury.
Putin condemned the West, accusing the U.S. and allies of threatening Russia and sparking the conflict in Ukraine.
‘It’s they who have started the war,’ he told an audience of lawmakers. ‘And we are using force to end it.’
Flanked by four Russian tricolor flags, Putin said the U.S. and its allies were sowing chaos and war.
‘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,’ he said.
And he used the occasion to say that he was suspending Russia’s participation in the New START Treaty, the last major arms control treaty between Moscow and Washington.
Polish President Andrzej Duda and US president Joe Biden face each other during their meeting at the presidential palace. Biden used the occasion to promise support to Europe
President Joe Biden was in Kyiv on Monday where he met President Volodomyr Zelensky. He traveled on to Poland where he will deliver a major speech on Tuesday evening
President Joe Biden arrives at a military airport, in Warsaw, Poland on Monday, after spending the day in war-torn Ukraine
It limits the number of nuclear warheads the world’s two biggest military powers can deploy and is due to expire in 2026.
‘I am forced to announce today that Russia is suspending its participation in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, he told his country’s political and military elite.
The White House slapped down his claims that the West was to blame for the war in Ukraine.
Nonsense, said Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser.
‘This was a war of choice Putin chose to fight it. He could have chosen not to,’ Sullivan told reporters in Warsaw.
‘And he can choose even now to end it, to go home and nobody is attacking Russia.
‘There’s a kind of absurdity in the notion that Russia was under some form of military threat from Ukraine or anyone else.’
Expect to hear that line from Biden, added Sullivan, when he delivers his speech in the Royal Warsaw Castle gardens on Tuesday evening.
It follows Biden’s surprise visit to Kyiv a day earlier, where he announced another $500 million in weapons for Ukrainian forces and promised fresh sanctions on Russia.
Biden arrived in Warsaw late on Monday night, after making the 10-hour train journey in and out of the Ukrainian capital under a cloak of secrecy.
The Polish capital was a scene of high security on Tuesday morning ahead of Biden’s meeting with his counterpart Andrzej Duda to discuss reinforcing Poland’s security and increasing the NATO presence in the country.
The President will also consult with allies from NATO’s eastern flank in Poland as the Russian invasion of Ukraine edges toward an even more complicated stage.
A line of police cars seen in front of the Palace of Culture and Science, in front of the Marriott Hotel where US President Joe Biden is staying during his visit to Warsaw, Poland on Tuesday
A huge security operation is underway in Poland as President Joe Biden prepares to meet his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda to discuss reinforcing Poland’s security and increasing the NATO presence in the country on Tuesday. Pictured: Police officers in Warsaw on Tuesday
Sullivan said Tuesday’s speech would be ‘vintage Joe Biden.’
‘The president has believed passionately in the themes he will discuss tonight for decades,’ he said.
‘And he is applying them at what you have all heard him described as at an inflection point today, where the next few years are going to determine the course of the next few decades.
The conflict – the most significant war in Europe since World War II – has already left tens of thousands dead, devastated Ukraine’s infrastructure system and damaged the global economy.
‘(We will discuss) the security of the Polish state and allied cooperation with the USA, also within NATO, what can we do to make the eastern flank, including Poland, safer,’ Duda’s foreign affairs adviser, Marcin Przydacz, told private broadcaster TVN 24.
‘It is no secret that we will talk about increasing the presence, also in terms of infrastructure, of NATO.’
On Wednesday, Biden will consult with Duda and other leaders of the Bucharest Nine, a group of Nato’s easternmost members, as part of his mission to solidify Western unity as both Ukraine and Russia prepare to launch spring offensives.
Biden’s trip to Kyiv was weeks in the planning. The president himself signed off on the decision to go only on Friday.
And he played a major part in pulling the wool over the world’s eyes by going out to dinner with first lady Jill on Saturday night, looking for all the world as if he only had ‘date night on his mind.’
While the White House press corps thought he was tucked up in bed later that night, he was spirited to Joint Base Andrews in the early hours of Sunday morning. Instead of his usual 747-based Air Force One jet, he boarded a smaller 757 version for his transatlantic version.
The first the world knew of his undercover trip was when photographs emerged of him on a downtown Kyiv walkabout with Zelensky.
Biden’s covert mission to Kyiv. He flew out of the U.S. at 4:15am with a stripped down team and just two journalists, instead of the usual 13. After a stop in Germany, it was on to Poland
Biden and Zelensky pay their respects at the Wall of Remembrance for the Deceased for Ukraine in Kyiv. President Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv on Monday
