MAS NUEVOS ARRIBA. ES EL FEED DEL NYT
Vladimir Putin declares that Russia will suspend its participation in the New START nuclear arms control treaty, the last major such agreement remaining between Russia and the United States. He dismissed it in his speech as a “theater of the absurd” that the U.S. is seeking to inspect Russian military facilities as part of the treaty, because “the United States and NATO say directly that their goal is a strategic defeat of Russia.”
Putin emphasizes that Russia is not leaving the agreement, but rather suspending its participation. “Before returning to the discussion of this issue, we must understand for ourselves what such countries of the North Atlantic alliance as France and Great Britain” possess in “their strategic arsenals,” he says.
New START limits Russia and the United States to 1,550 deployed nuclear weapons. By halting participation in the treaty, which expires in February 2026, Putin may mean that he will exceed its limits — or halt the US ability to monitor compliance. There have been no compliance visits for some time.
New START does not cover the weapons that the United States and Europe are worried about the most: “battlefield nukes,’’ the phrase for tactical nuclear weapons, which at moments Putin has threatened to use in the Ukraine conflict. Instead, the treaty covers only strategic nuclear weapons — essentially, intercontinental weapons that could hit the U.S. or other nations.
Vladimir Putin is now talking about science and technology, and professional training. Much of this speech is about signaling that Russia is serious about entering a new phase of self-reliance as it cuts itself off from the West.
Putin, as he has before, had urged business magnates minutes earlier to bring their money home. “Business, especially in key sectors and industries, must act in the Russian jurisdiction. This is a basic principle.”
The Russian president’s reference to Russia’s resilient economy points to an issue that U.S. and European officials know they have not sufficiently addressed: Russia’s energy sales, the backbone of its economy. Despite efforts by the Group of 7 nations to enact a price cap on Russian oil, nations like China, India and Turkey remain big buyers of Russian energy. Some of that money powers the war.
The Russian leader injects a populist note into his speech, castigating Russian businesspeople for using their profits for “yachts, estates and elite real estate” abroad. Referring to Western sanctions on Russian oligarchs, he adds: “None of the simple citizens of the country, believe me, was sorry for those who lost their capital in international banks.”
The Russian president urges oligarchs to forget about whatever assets they may have lost to Western sanctions, rather than to fight to get them back. “Now is not the time to try to hold on to the past,” he says.
The website of the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, or VGTRK, which manages a number of government channels, is offline during President Putin’s speech. The IT Army of Ukraine, a hacking group, claimed to have carried out a cyberattack; that claim could not be immediately confirmed.
President Vladimir V. Putin is now talking about mortgage subsidies in his speech. We’re still waiting to see whether he is saving a surprise for the end — as he did in 2018, when he revealed Russian hypersonic weapons at the end of his state-of-the-nation speech.
The Russian president’s speech is being streamed live on at least 10 Russian news channels and their websites. RuTube, Russia’s answer to YouTube, is also promoting the speech at the top of its homepage.
Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, dismissed Putin’s claim that the West is responsible for the war in Ukraine, saying: “If Russia stops fighting the war in Ukraine and goes home, the war ends.”
Sullivan said that President Biden’s speech later in the day was not intended as a direct rebuttal to Putin’s remarks. “We did not set the speech up as some kind of head-to-head,” he said. “This is not a rhetorical contest with anyone else. This is an affirmative statement of values, a vision for what the world we’re both trying to build and defend should look like.”
Russia’s economic output declined 2.1 percent last year, Mr. Putin says. He adds — correctly — that this number is much less than the initial predictions of how much Western sanctions would harm Russia’s economy.
One conclusion we can already draw from President Vladimir V. Putin’s speech: He doesn’t expect the war to end anytime soon. He promises military service members and draftees “a regular leave of not less than 14 days and no less frequently than once every half year.”
We’re about half an hour through a speech that is expected to last about an hour, and so far President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has made little news while repeating his familiar talking points. He does tend to leave any surprises in these state-of-the-nation speeches for the end, though, so it’s too soon to draw any broader conclusions.
Putin’s diction so far is relatively measured — not as angry and forceful as we heard in his September speech, for instance, when he announced a draft of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
The attendees of Putin’s speech stand for a few seconds of silence in memory of the fallen soldiers and civilians “who died under shelling at the hands of neo-Nazis and punishers.”
Putin announces the creation of a “special state fund” to provide “personalized help to the families of dead fighters and the veterans of the special military operation.”
The Russian president says the West “cannot fail to realize that it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield,” which is why it is waging “more and more aggressive information attacks” on Russia’s “traditional values” that target young people. “The Anglican Church, for example, plans, to consider the idea of a gender-neutral God. What can you say? ‘Forgive me, Lord, they know not what they do.’”
(Church of England officials have said that they want to consider allowing priests to refer to God in gender-neutral terms, and plan to begin a project on the question in spring. But any change would have to be approved by the church’s internal Parliament, the General Synod.)
