President Vladimir Putin has suspended Russia’s participation in a key arms treaty with the United States that limits the two sides’ strategic nuclear arsenals.
The New START treaty was 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.
The announcement came as part of a speech delivered ahead of the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine.
Mr Putin pinned the blame for the conflict on “Western elites”, who he said want to “finish” with Russia “forever.”
Addressing members of both houses of the Russian parliament in Moscow, he said the West was supporting “traitors” who opposed Russia‘s actions, and thanked Russians for their “courage and resolution” in supporting what Moscow calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Putin’s major address came just hours before Joe Biden meets the Polish president Andrzej Duda.
