Vladimir Putin, Russian president, signed this Tuesday the law that formally suspends the last treaty between Moscow and Washington, of 2010, for the control of nuclear weapons, START III or new START, a measure that he had announced in his annual speech before the Parliament of his country on February 21 and days later it was approved by the Senate.
During his annual speech before the Russian Federal Assembly that brings together the two houses of Parliament of that country, the president of the Slavic nation, reported the suspension of participation in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which two days later, unanimously It was ratified by the upper house of the Legislature.
The New START or START III was signed 12 years ago by the then presidents Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev, and limits the deployment of nuclear warheads to a maximum of 1,550, and missiles and bombers to 700 for each country, and includes inspections to verify its fulfillment.
Putin informed Russian legislators that at the beginning of February this year, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) made a ‘de facto’ statement demanding a return to the implementation of the treaty, including the admission of inspections to the nuclear and defense facilities of Russia.
I don’t even know what to call it. It is a theater of the absurd,” Putin said of such a claim amid the hostilities in Ukraine and the tension between Moscow and Washington.
Reaction from the United States
Putin has insisted that Moscow not fully withdraw from the pact, and the Russian foreign ministry said the country would respect the nuclear weapons limits set out in the treaty and continue to notify the United States of ballistic missile test launches.
On Monday, a senior US arms control official harshly criticized Russia for suspending its participation in the treaty, but said Washington will try to work with Moscow to continue implementing it, the US news agency reported. PA.
“Russia once again shows the world that it is not a responsible nuclear power,” Bonnie Jenkins, the undersecretary of state for arms control, told a session of the Conference on Disarmament, an international forum affiliated with the United Nations.
Jenkins told reporters that the United States has not fully assessed the consequences of Russia’s suspension measure, but added: “We do not see any evidence that Russia is in breach.”
The West uses extremists for its benefit
During a meeting of senior officials of the Federal Security Service (FSB for its acronym in Russian), Putin said that the West has never scrupled to use extremists to its advantage, adding that it always reached for what it could use against Russia. .
He called on the FSB to “identify and suppress the illegal activities of those who seek to divide and weaken our society and use separatism, nationalism, neo-Nazism and xenophobia as a weapon.”
He urged to continue identifying and eliminating the actions of those who use the Internet and social networks to propagate the ideology of terrorism and extremism and try to involve Russian citizens in terrorist groups and stressed that young people are the most vulnerable group to the influence of messages launched from the West.
Putin pointed out the increase in crimes related to extremism and demanded to counter them in the same active way, while calling for the development of regional segments of the state system to counter terrorism, including in the new regions of the country, he said. Sputnik.
He instructed the FSB to put an end to the attempts of “all that rubbish” to intensify the division of Russian society and to keep under control the critical infrastructure facilities in the country, in particular, public places, transport hubs, industrial facilities. and energetic. “The Russian-Ukrainian section of the state border should be under special control of the FSB Border Guard,” he noted.
“In general, it is necessary to strengthen the counterintelligence line, because the special services of the West have always worked actively against Russia, and now they have mobilized more human, technical and other resources against us. We need to respond appropriately to this,” Putin said.
Warns of Ukraine false flag chemical attack
The Russian Defense Ministry, in the words of the head of the Russian radioactive, chemical and biological protection forces, Igor Kirilov, denounced that the US is organizing a setup using toxic substances in Ukraine, to blame Moscow.
The senior Russian official stated that an influential American NGO held a conference on the events in Ukraine on February 22 and in that context, the former US ambassador to Russia, John Sullivan, stated that “Russian troops plan to use chemical weapons in the area of the special military operation.
“We consider this information as the intention of the United States itself and its accomplices to carry out a false flag attack in Ukraine using toxic chemicals,” Kirilov was quoted as saying by Sputnik.
The head of radioactive, chemical and biological protection of the Russian Defense Ministry referred to how Washington hopes that as a result of the fighting in Ukraine, the assembly would not be effectively investigated, Russia would be blamed and the real organizers and perpetrators could evade their responsibility.
Arrival of the train with chemical substances in Kramatorsk
The Russian Defense reported that on February 10, a trainload of chemicals arrived in the Kiev-controlled city of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk People’s Republic, and was subsequently delivered to the contact line.
Kirilov noted that according to Russian intelligence, the train arrived “accompanied by a group of foreign citizens. They detached the wagon and towed it to the territory of the Kuibyshev Metallurgical Plant in Kramatorsk, where the chemicals were unloaded under the control of agents of the Ukrainian security services and representatives of the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
He reported that the shipment included eight boxes with a chemical hazard symbol, labeled BZ, and marked with two red lines (class of poisonous substances with temporary withdrawal action), and that of those eight packages, five boxes are CS-Riot and three are CR-Riot, marked with a single red line (irritants).
Eleven carloads of specially marked ammunition similar to what had been previously upgraded in the United States to defeat elements with liquid formulations of irritants were unloaded in Kramatorsk on February 19, Kirilov said, adding that the Euro-Atlantic Coordination Center NATO) also foresaw a large shipment of protective equipment to Kiev, with antidotes against sarin and soman.
The Russian Defense official explained that all these data indicate an attempt to carry out large-scale assemblies using the military psychotropic poison agent BZ in the conflict, after which he stressed that the West is wrong to expect the success of false flag attacks with substances toxic chemicals.
“We have repeatedly pointed out that the leaders of Western countries regularly make provocative statements about the possibility of Russia using weapons of mass destruction,” Kirilov said.
