The Blubber

Russian President Vladimir Putin has officially suspended Russia’s participation in the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between Russia and the United States.

The 2010 agreement limits the U.S. and Russia each to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads—strategic weapons that can be placed on submarines, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and long-range bomber planes. It also includes monitoring and on-site inspection elements.

“The United States and NATO are directly saying that their goal is to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. Are they going to inspect our defense facilities, including the newest ones, as if nothing had happened?” he said. “Do they really think we’re easily going to let them in there just like that?”

“They want to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on us and try to get to our nuclear facilities at the same time,” he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken deplored Putin’s move as “deeply unfortunate and irresponsible,” noting that “we’ll be watching carefully to see what Russia actually does.”

He said that “we’ll, of course, make sure that in any event we are postured appropriately for the security of our own country and that of our allies,” but emphasized that “we remain ready to talk about strategic arms limitations at any time with Russia irrespective of anything else going on in the world or in our relationship.”