Both chambers of Russia’s parliament yesterday endorsed President Vladimir Putin’s move to suspend the last remaining nuclear arms treaty with the United States, with officials and lawmakers casting it as an eleventh-hour warning to Washington amid the tensions over Ukraine.
The Voice of America (VOA) says U.S. President Joe Biden, speaking in Warsaw where he was meeting with the leaders of the eastern flank of NATO countries closest to Russia, called Putin's suspension of the nuclear pact a "big mistake."
The Associated Press (AP) reports that Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council that is chaired by Putin, emphasized Wednesday that the suspension of Russia’s participation in the pact was a signal to the U.S. that Moscow is ready to use nuclear weapons to protect itself.
“If the U.S. wants Russia’s defeat, we have the right to defend ourselves with any weapons, including nuclear,” Medvedev said on his messaging app channel. “Let the U.S. elites who have lost touch with reality think about what they got. If the U.S. wants Russia to be defeated, we are standing on the verge of a global conflict.”
Leonid Slutsky, the head of the State Duma (Russia’s lower chamber of parliament) Committee for Foreign Affairs, emphasized that the suspension is "reversible and can be reviewed if our Western opponents come back to reason and realize their responsibility for destroying the global security system."
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said it would be up to Putin to decide whether Moscow could return to the pact. "The president will determine if and when the conditions for reviewing or clarifying [Tuesday's] decision emerge," he told reporters.
He noted that Russia's satellite surveillance capability will allow it to keep track of U.S. nuclear forces even without exchanges of data and inspections that were envisaged by the treaty.
