Roving Periscope: A year on, Putin blames the West for Ukraine war, suspends START

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: Two days before the first anniversary of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine on Friday, President Vladimir Putin accused the war-torn neighbor and the West of provoking the conflict with the expansion of NATO and new European anti-rocket defense systems, and developing military contingents on the border of Russia.

Since launching the devastating and relentless war on February 24, 2022, Russia has claimed it is only a “special military operation.” He vowed to “systematically” continue it.

“They started the war, and we used force to stop it,” Putin said in a defiant Annual State of the Nation speech, according to a translation of the speech in Moscow, the media reported on Tuesday.

“We did everything possible to resolve this problem in a peaceful way. We were patient in our negotiations to come out of this terrible conflict. However, behind our backs a completely different scenario was being prepared,” he said.

His speech came a day after US President Joe Biden secretly traveled to Ukraine and promised a fresh aid package of USD 500 million, taking the total since the beginning of the war to USD 100 billion. The funding includes artillery ammunition, anti-armor systems, and air surveillance radars.

Putin also said Russia was suspending its participation in the New START treaty with the US that limits the two sides’ strategic nuclear arsenals. The USA and the Soviet Union signed the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START-I) on July 31, 1991, for the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms.

“In this regard, I am forced to announce today that Russia is suspending its participation in the strategic offensive arms treaty,” Putin told lawmakers towards the end of a major speech to parliament.

The New START treaty, signed in Prague in 2010, came into force the following year and was extended in 2021 for five more years just after US President Joe Biden took office. It caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the United States and Russia can deploy, and the deployment of land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them.

According to experts, Russia has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world, with close to 6,000 warheads. Together, Russia and the US hold around 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads – enough to destroy the planet many times over, the media reported.

But Putin did not just target the West and Ukraine. He also made a slew of apparent barbs at his sanctioned oligarch familiars and even labeled them as traitors of the Russian state.

He claimed elite business people were now paying the price for taking advantage of Western influence and the liberalization of financial markets following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 to move wealth out of the country.

“Instead of creating employment here, this capital was spent buying elite real-estate, yachts,” he said. “Some came to Russia,” he noted, “but the first wave was spent on consuming Western goods.”

One of these oligarchs, Oleg Deripaska, hit headlines recently when he described it as a “colossal mistake” for Russia to invade Ukraine.

Putin said that sanctions against many Russian business people after the conflict started showed that the West was not a sanctuary. “The latest events have demonstrated that the West was just a ghost in terms of being a safe haven,” he said.

“Those who saw Russia as just a source of income and were planning to live abroad saw that they just got robbed in the West.

“Many of you will remember that I joked you will be running around Western courts, trying to save your wealth in the West, and this is exactly what happened.”

“None of the simple citizens of this country were sorry about those who lost massive bank accounts in the West,” he added.

Ukraine’s Western allies are “punishing” themselves with the sanctions levied against Russia. The West had “not achieved success” in its military and economic “aggression” against Russia — nor would it, he said.

“The initiators of the sanctions are punishing themselves. They provoked a growth of prices in their own countries, closures of factories, and collapse of the energy sector. They are telling their citizens it’s the Russians who are to blame,” Putin said.

The Russian President also said the sanctions are an attempt to destabilize Russian society, but he claimed that its economy remains strong. Russia has all the financial resources to guarantee its national security and development.

“Sanctions are just a means, but the objective as the West says and I say directly to force our citizens to suffer. They are trying to destabilize our society from the inside, but their attempts were not justified and were not successful,” he said.

He also announced a state fund to support veterans and the families of fallen soldiers. The fund would provide “social, medical and psychological support” to soldiers and their families, and contribute toward education, entrepreneurship, career development, and home care.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday dubbed President Putin’s war a “strategic failure.”

“One year after President Putin attacked Ukraine it is clear that his war has been a strategic failure in every way,” Blinken said during a news conference with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias in Athens.

In an apparent retort against Ukraine’s Western allies, China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang called on certain countries to stop “fueling the fire” over the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“China is deeply worried that the Ukraine conflict will continue to escalate or even spiral out of control,” Qin said during a speech at the foreign ministry in Beijing. “We urge certain countries to immediately stop fueling the fire.”

His comments came as the US warned China against providing military support to Russia, which Beijing insisted it is not doing.

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi is due to visit Moscow Tuesday and might meet with President Vladimir Putin.

President Xi Jinping is also expected to deliver a “peace speech” Friday, on the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv Tuesday to reiterate her country’s support for Ukraine as she seeks to smooth tensions in her right-wing alliance.

The trip comes a week after her coalition partner Silvio Berlusconi, the Forza Italia leader, blamed Zelenskyy for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.