Biden says Ukraine ‘stands sturdy’ a 12 months after Russian invasion By Reuters

By Nandita Bose and Guy Faulconbridge

WARSAW/MOSCOW (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden stated on Tuesday Ukraine “stands strong” a 12 months after the Russian invasion and that Moscow would by no means defeat its neighbour, talking hours after the Kremlin suspended a landmark nuclear arms management treaty over the West’s assist for Kyiv.

Biden gave a speech at Warsaw’s Royal Castle in Poland following a shock go to to Ukraine. Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed that Moscow would obtain its goals in Ukraine and accused the West of plotting to destroy Russia.

Alleging that the United States was turning the Ukraine conflict into a worldwide battle, Putin stated Russia was suspending participation within the New START treaty, its final main arms management treaty with Washington.

Putin, upping the ante in Moscow’s greatest confrontation with the West for the reason that 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, additionally introduced that new strategic techniques had been placed on fight obligation and threatened to renew nuclear checks.

Days forward of the primary anniversary of the Feb. 24 invasion, Biden proclaimed “unwavering” assist for Kyiv and a dedication to bolstering NATO’s japanese flank going through Russia, whereas rejecting Moscow’s competition that the West was planning to assault Russia.

“One year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of Kyiv,” Biden stated 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 might roll over. He was flawed,” he said.

Biden did not mention Russia’s START suspension in his speech, but said Washington and its allies did not seek to control or destroy Russia through their solidarity with Kyiv.

“The West was not plotting to assault Russia, as Putin stated right now … This conflict was by no means a necessity. It’s a tragedy. President Putin selected this conflict,” Biden said.

NATO allies and other supporters have sent Ukraine tens of billions of dollars worth of increasingly heavy war weaponry and ammunition, with modern battle tanks promised and some considering Kyiv’s appeals for fighter jets and longer-range missiles.

Russia suffered three major battlefield reverses in Ukraine last year but still controls around a fifth of its neighbour and appears to be inching forward in a “meatgrinder” offensive in the east – a war many expect to last for many months or years.

‘IRRESPONSIBLE’

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Putin’s New START suspension “deeply unlucky and irresponsible”. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said it made the world a more dangerous place, and urged Putin to reconsider.

Russia’s foreign ministry said later that Moscow intended to continue abiding by restrictions in the treaty on the number of warheads it could deploy. Washington left room for Moscow to change course, with Blinken saying it would be watching to see what Moscow actually did.

Signed by then-U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in 2010, the treaty caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads 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.

Putin said, without citing evidence, that some in Washington were considering breaking a moratorium on nuclear testing. ” … If the United States conducts checks, then we’ll. No one ought to have harmful illusions that international strategic parity might be destroyed,” Putin said.

“Per week in the past, I signed a decree on placing new ground-based strategic techniques on fight obligation.” It was not immediately clear which systems he meant.

Putin said Ukraine had sought to strike a facility deep inside Russia where it keeps nuclear bombers, a reference to the Engels air base. Ukraine has followed a policy of not publicly claiming responsibility for any attacks on Russian soil.

NUCLEAR THREATS

Putin, who has over the past year repeatedly hinted that Russia could use a nuclear weapon if threatened, was in effect saying that he could dismantle the architecture of nuclear arms control unless the West backs off in Ukraine.

“They intend to remodel a neighborhood battle right into a section of worldwide confrontation,” he said. “This is precisely how we perceive all of it and we’ll react accordingly, as a result of on this case we’re speaking in regards to the existence of our nation.”

Putin said the conflict had been forced on Russia, particularly by NATO’s eastward expansion since the Cold War.

“The individuals of Ukraine have grow to be the hostage of the Kyiv regime and its Western overlords, who’ve successfully occupied this nation within the political, army and financial sense.”

Kyiv and Western leaders such as Biden reject that narrative as an unfounded pretext for a Russian land grab in a fellow former Soviet republic that Putin calls an artificial state, and say he must be made to lose his gamble on invasion.

A senior aide to Ukraine’s president said Putin’s speech showed he had lost touch with reality.

“He is in a totally totally different actuality, the place there isn’t any alternative to conduct a dialogue about justice and worldwide legislation,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told Reuters.

“Russia is at a lifeless finish. In probably the most determined state of affairs. Everything Russia will do subsequent will solely worsen its state of affairs.”

As Putin was speaking, at least one Russian rocket slammed into a busy street in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, killing six people.

Ukraine’s military and city authorities said 12 others were wounded in the attack, which left a pool of blood on the pavement beside a mangled bus stop.

Local authorities said Kherson came under fire from multiple rocket launchers while Putin portrayed the West as the aggressor in Ukraine and Russia as not waging war on the Ukrainian people. Russia did not immediately comment on the incident.

Moscow has denied deliberately targeting civilians in its “particular army operation”. But cities throughout Ukraine have been devastated in missile and drone assaults and tens of 1000’s of Ukrainian civilians have been killed together with troopers on either side. Millions of individuals have been pushed from their houses.

Ukraine’s training ministry informed colleges on Tuesday to carry lessons remotely from Feb. 22-24 due to the danger of Russian missile strikes across the first anniversary of the invasion.

Russia has carried out common missile and drone strikes on cities, typically removed from entrance strains within the east and south, since October, knocking out electrical energy for thousands and thousands of individuals and killing some civilians.