The United States and other Western countries do not seek to take control of Russia and did not plan to attack it, U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday.
“The United States and the nations of Europe do not seek to destroy or control Russia. The West was not plotting to attack Russia,” Biden said in his speech in Warsaw.
AFP reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier on Tuesday that Russia would properly respond to plans to turn the local conflict in Ukraine into a global confrontation, and that Russia cannot be defeated on the battlefield.
“Western elites aren’t hiding their goal to deliver Russia a strategic defeat, as they say – that’s a direct quote. What does it mean? What is it for us? This means putting an end to us once and for all, that is, they intend to turn the local conflict into a phase of global confrontation. This is exactly how we understand that, and we’ll respond to that accordingly,” Putin said in his address to the Russian Federal Assembly on Tuesday.
Alleging that the United States was turning the war into a global conflict, Putin said Russia was suspending participation in the New START treaty, its last major arms control treaty with Washington.
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 that 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.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Putin’s move “deeply unfortunate and irresponsible”.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said it made the world a more dangerous place and urged Putin to reconsider.
The Russian leader said, without citing evidence, that some in Washington were considering breaking a moratorium on nuclear testing.
