Putin Announces Suspension of New START Treaty, Orders New Strategic Systems Be Put on Combat Duty
Sputnik – 21.02.2023
Russia will be suspending its participation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction (New START) Treaty, President Vladimir Putin has announced.
The Russian president made the announcement during the course of a major annual address to lawmakers on Tuesday that focused on the security crisis in Ukraine and the broader global tensions between the West and Russia.
“They [the West] seek to inflict a strategic defeat on us and to creep onto our nuclear sites. In connection with this, I am forced to announce today that Russia is suspending its participation in the New START Treaty. I repeat – not exiting from the treaty, but suspending its participation,” Putin said, speaking to gathered lawmakers in Moscow during his speech to the Federal Assembly.
Putin explained that “at the start of February, the North Atlantic Alliance made a statement factually demanding that Russia ‘return to the implementation of the strategic offensive arms treaty,’ including the admission of inspections to our nuclear and defense facilities.”
“I don’t even know what to call this – some kind of theater of the absurd. We know that the West is involved directly in attempts of the Kiev regime to strike the bases of our strategic aviation,” Putin said, pointing to recent Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s Engels Air Base, home to part of the airborne contingent of Russia’s nuclear triad.
The drones used in these attacks were “equipped and modernized with the assistance of NATO specialists,” Putin said. “And now they want to inspect our defense facilities. In the current conditions and today’s confrontation, this simply sounds like some kind of nonsense.”
“A week ago, I signed a decree putting new ground-based strategic weapons systems on combat duty. Are they going to stick their nose in there too?” Putin asked.
The Russian president suggested that NATO’s collective statement essentially amounted to an application to join the New START Treaty, and said Moscow would only welcome such a move.
“We agree, please go ahead. Furthermore, we think that such a formulation of the issue is long overdue. After all, NATO contains not just one nuclear power – the USA. Britain and France also have nuclear arsenals, which are being developed and improved, and which are also directed against us, against Russia,” Putin said.
Slamming the US and NATO over the “hypocrisy” of their demands, Putin recalled how the Western bloc has attempted to assure Moscow that “there is no connection between issues related to strategic offensive arms and, say, the conflict in Ukraine, or other hostile actions against our country,” while at the same time seeking to “defeat” Russia militarily.
“This is either the height of hypocrisy and cynicism, or the height of stupidity. You can’t call them idiots, they are not stupid people: they want to inflict a strategic defeat on us,” the president said.
What is New START and Why Is It Important?
The New START Treaty is the last major strategic arms limitation agreement between the nuclear superpowers – Russia and the United States. The agreement, drafted in 2009 and signed by then-Russian and US Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama in Prague, Czech Republic in 2010, limits the two countries’ deployed arsenals of strategic weapons and nuke stockpiles, and features a series of measures aimed at increased transparency and trust, including the broadcast of telemetry data, limits to missile testing activities, and the exchange of other information.
The Trump administration threatened to let the clock run out on New START in late 2020 after withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty – a late Cold War-era pact which eliminated Soviet and US ground-based nuclear missiles in the 500-5,500 km range, in 2019. The Biden administration agreed to renew New START for five years in early 2021. Pentagon planners have repeatedly criticized the strategic treaty for its failure to account for the nuclear arsenal of China. Beijing has said that it would be happy to sign a nuclear agreement with Washington if the US reduced the size of its nuclear arsenal to China’s level.
The post-Cold War strategic security order began to be dismantled in late 2001, when the George W. Bush administration announced that it would scrap the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty – a landmark 1972 agreement designed to limit anti-missile defenses and thus reduce the danger of a global nuclear war. Washington quit the treaty despite proposals by Moscow at the time to establish a joint missile defense system in the Caucasus to eliminate any threats posed to the US or Europe.
Russia suspends last nuclear treaty with US
RT | February 21, 2023
Moscow is suspending its participation in the last remaining nuclear treaty between Russia and the US, President Vladimir Putin has announced. During his key address to the Russian parliament on Tuesday, he noted that Moscow will not exit the New START Treaty, but is temporarily withdrawing.
Explaining the decision, Putin stated that the agreement was initially drawn up under completely different circumstances, when Russia and the US did not perceive each other as adversaries. Now, however, according to the president, not only is the US issuing ultimatums to Russia, but NATO itself has essentially made an application to become part of the treaty as well.
The bloc members are now demanding an inspection of Russia’s strategic facilities, Putin said, noting that Moscow’s requests to inspect Western nuclear facilities under the treaty are systematically denied with only formal explanations for the rejection.
Putin noted that the US has continued to insist on maintaining hegemony, while its NATO partners openly admit that they want to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.
“Russia cannot ignore this. We cannot allow ourselves to ignore this,” he said.
Before we return to discussing this agreement, we must understand for ourselves what the intentions of countries like France and the UK are and how we will consider their strategic arsenals as well, which is the cumulative striking potential of NATO.
The New START Treaty was originally signed in 2010 by then-Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, and aimed to cut in half the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers deployed around the world. Under the treaty, both countries were supposed to allow the other side a limited number of inspections per year to verify compliance with the agreement. Unless extended, the treaty was set to expire in 2026.
Biden posing in Kiev as problems at home pile up
By Drago Bosnic | February 21, 2023
On February 20, United States President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kiev. The unannounced trip comes on the heels of the failed Munich Conference and just days ahead of the first anniversary of Russia’s counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe. Various sources indicate that Moscow is very likely to launch another massive offensive, resulting in the political West’s arms shipment frenzy, as it is desperate to at least postpone Russia’s victory. NATO member states are flooding the Kiev regime with new weapons, particularly tanks, IFVs (infantry fighting vehicles) and APCs (armored personnel carriers) to offset the Neo-Nazis junta’s mounting losses.
As per usual, Biden reiterated his “full support” for the “vibrant democracy in Ukraine” and once again condemned Russia’s special military operation as a “brutal, unprovoked invasion”. According to the AP, he also announced another “earth-shattering” $500 million in military “aid” which includes new ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles), air defense radars, howitzers, shells, ammunition and other systems. However, there was no mention of any of the advanced weapons the Kiev regime has been “begmanding” for nearly a year. Considering that Neo-Nazi junta frontman Volodymyr Zelensky requested a “mere” trillion dollars (1.000.000.000.000), if Biden makes at least two Kiev trips per year, bringing at least $500 million each time, it would take him “only” a thousand years to fulfill this “perfectly reasonable” request.
Biden also stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin was “dead wrong” for allegedly “believing he could instantly take Ukraine”. However, nothing indicates this was Russia’s intention, as it is virtually impossible to take the largest country in Europe with only the 200-250 thousand soldiers initially engaged in Russia’s counteroffensive. What Putin announced was demilitarization and denazification and considering the Neo-Nazi junta’s staggering losses, both tasks are going as planned. Biden also insisted that “the US has built a coalition of nations from the Atlantic to the Pacific to help defend Ukraine with unprecedented military, economic, and humanitarian support”, although the Munich Conference showed just how isolated the political West is.
Biden also announced additional sanctions “against elites and companies that are trying to evade or backfill Russia’s war machine”. It’s not entirely clear what the US president meant by this, but considering that the current economic siege has failed spectacularly, Moscow could even rejoice as the existing sanctions have actually helped it achieve greater economic growth than most of the countries enforcing them. Some have suggested that new restrictions will be aimed at Russia’s military industry. However, this would make little sense, as the Russian military has been virtually unscathed by the sanctions, given the fact that its suppliers are state-owned companies with their own resources and technologies.
Rather theatrically, during Biden’s meeting with Zelensky, air raid sirens sounded in Kiev. What was planned for a dramatic effect to portray the US president as some sort of a “hero” turned out to be nothing more than posing, since Washington DC revealed it has notified Moscow that Biden would be going to Kiev. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan stated that “the Russians were notified President Biden would be traveling to Kiev hours before his departure” and that this was done “for deconfliction purposes”. He didn’t disclose how Moscow responded to this, but despite the melodramatic air raid sirens, there were no Russian missiles or airstrikes in Kiev. Biden was promptly mocked for his theatrics by many around the world, including in the US.
Perhaps the most appropriate response to this came from Ohio, where many are jokingly suggesting the state be annexed by Ukraine, so they could get some relief, since Biden has made no mention of the disaster-stricken town of East Palestine in Ohio where a toxic chemical spill happened more than two weeks ago. The mainstream propaganda machine has been ignoring or at least trivializing the event, despite thousands of complaints about the resulting pollution. Approximately 50 freight train cars derailed on the outskirts of the town on 3 February, causing a toxic chemical spill that left the surrounding areas effectively unfit for habitation. Residents have reported headaches and eye irritation, in addition to finding their cars and lawns covered in soot. The hazardous chemicals have already killed pets and wildlife, including thousands of fish.
Since Biden took office, the US has been experiencing a plethora of issues, including 40-year peak inflation that has effectively pushed its economy into recession. The DNC neoliberals have exponentially intensified the existing issues, leaving chaos across the US, particularly in core urban areas. States such as California have seen soaring homelessness and record-breaking crime rates, to say nothing of the substance abuse crisis. Similar issues exist in most other DNC-run urban areas across the country. However, instead of tackling these issues, in addition to numerous already existing problems (racism, gun violence, immigration, etc.), the US keeps trying to divert attention by inciting wars and destabilization around the globe.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Monbiot: We Must End Our Dependence On Farming
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | February 20, 2023
We must end our dependence on eating.
Why does anybody treat this nutter seriously?
Perhaps before he makes a fool of himself next time, he might like to check what the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organisation have to say on the matter:
ABOUT 60 PERCENT of the world’s pasture land (about 2.2 million km2), just less than half the world’s usable surface is covered by grazing systems. Distributed between arid, semi arid and sub humid, humid, temperate and tropical highlands zones, this supports about 360 million cattle (half of which are in the humid savannas), and over 600 million sheep and goats, mostly in the arid rangelands. The distribution of livestock over the different ecological zones is provided in Annex Table 2.
Grazing systems supply about 9 percent of the world’s production of beef and about 30 percent of the world’s production of sheep and goat meat. For an estimated 100 million people in arid areas, and probably a similar number in other zones, grazing livestock is the only possible source of livelihood.
Environmental challenges
Grazing can be visualized as beautiful cows in lush pastures in north-western Europe or New Zealand-livestock in harmony with nature. Indeed, livestock can improve soil and vegetation cover and plant and animal biodiversity, as described in this chapter’s case studies of widely different conditions in Kenya, the western United States and Guinea. By removing biomass, which otherwise might provide the fuel for bush fires, by controlling shrub growth and by dispersing seeds through their hoofs and manure, grazing animals can improve plant species composition. In addition, trampling can stimulate grass tillering, improve seed germination and break-up hard soil crusts.
However, many people associate grazing animals with overgrazing, soil degradation and deforestation. To them livestock keeping in arid regions of the tropics provokes images of clouds of dust, bleached cow skeletons and an advancing desert. The two most quoted sources are the Global Assessment of Soil Degradation (Oldeman et al., 1991), which estimates that 680 million hectares of rangeland have become degraded since 1945, and Dregne et al., (1991) who argue that 73 percent of the world’s 4.5 billion hectares of rangeland is moderately or severely degraded. In humid areas, livestock are associated with ranch encroachment and deforestation of tropical rainforests and competition with wildlife.
Prolonged heavy grazing undoubtedly contributes to the disappearance of palatable species and the subsequent dominance by other, less palatable, herbaceous plants or bushes. Such loss of plant and, in consequence, animal biodiversity can require a long regenerative cycle (30 years in savannas, 100 years in rainforests). Excessive livestock grazing also causes soil compaction and erosion, decreased soil fertility and water infiltration, and a loss in organic matter content and water storage capacity. On the other hand, total absence of grazing also reduces biodiversity because a thick canopy of shrubs and trees develops which intercepts light and moisture and results in overprotected plant communities which are susceptible to natural disasters.
The environmental challenge is thus to identify the policies, institutions and technologies which will enhance the positive and mitigate the negative effects of grazing. Environmental challenges, issues and options differ significantly according to climate and land capabilities. Livestock-environment interactions are therefore described separately for the arid, semi-arid and sub-humid, humid rainforest, and temperate and tropical highlands grazing systems respectively. As will be seen, that differentiation is particularly important for the arid eco-systems. As aridity increases, so does variability of rainfall, to the extent that the periodicity of rain becomes the single most important factor affecting the state of the natural resource base. Classical concepts of vegetation succession and climax vegetation do not apply in such environments and new concepts are required.
https://www.fao.org/3/X5303E/x5303e05.htm
Forget climate change and all the other things that Monbiot rambles on about. His only real concern, as he makes clear at the end of his rant, is that farming takes up too much land, which he thinks should be rewilded.
And he is evidently happy to condemn billions to starvation to do it.
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Hands off ‘our hemisphere’ or Venezuela pays the price: US Senator warns Russia
RT | February 13, 2019
The US staked a claim on half the world, as Senate Armed Services Committee chair Jim Inhofe said Washington might have to intervene in Venezuela if Russia dares set up a military base not just there, but “in our hemisphere.”
“I think that it could happen,” Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) told a group of reporters on Tuesday. “You’ve got a guy down there that is killing everybody. You could have him put together a base that Russia would have on our hemisphere. And if those things happen, it may be to the point where we’ll have to intervene with troops and respond.”
Should Russia dare encroach on the US’ neck of the woods, Inhofe said: “we have to take whatever action necessary to stop them from doing that.” … continue
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