Russian president Vladimir Putin today suspended Moscow’s participation in a key nuclear arms treaty and accused the West of starting the war in Ukraine in a bitter state-of-the-union speech.
The despot claimed the West was plotting to achieve ‘limitless power’ and vowed to ‘systematically’ continue with the offensive in Ukraine during an explosive speech in Russia’s parliament.
He told lawmakers he was addressing them ‘at a time which we all know is a difficult, watershed moment for our country, a time of cardinal, irreversible changes around the world, the most important historic events that will shape the future of our country and our people’.
He added: ‘The responsibility for fuelling the Ukrainian conflict, for its escalation, for the number of victims… lies completely with Western elites.’
Kyiv quickly hit back at the Russian leader, with presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak saying the speech demonstrated the ‘hopelessness of [Putin’s] position’ and that he was ‘in a completely different reality’.
As Putin made his two-hour speech this morning, Russian missiles ripped through a busy bus stop leaving bodies strewn across the street. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Putin’s troops of ‘mercilessly killing’ five civilians in the southern city of Kherson.
As US President Joe Biden prepared to give a speech in Warsaw, the country’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said there is ‘a kind of absurdity in the notion that Russia was under some form of military threat from Ukraine or anyone else’.
