WARSAW, FEBRUARY 22: President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin made a “big mistake” by suspending his country’s participation in the last remaining U.S.-Russia nuclear arms control treaty.
The U.S. President was in Poland to reassure eastern flank NATO allies that the U.S. will remain by their sides amid the grinding Russian invasion of Ukraine. In his first comments since Putin’s announcement on Tuesday, Biden condemned the Russian decision to pull back from the treaty, known as New START.
There is no sweeter word than freedom, no nobler goal than freedom, and no higher aspiration than freedom.
All that we do now must be done so our children and grandchildren will know it as well: Freedom. pic.twitter.com/vJ8ji6UQPM
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 22, 2023
The decision to suspend Russian cooperation with the treaty’s nuclear warhead and missile inspections follows Moscow’s cancellation late last year of talks that had been intended to salvage an agreement that both sides have accused the other of violating.
Biden’s comments came as he was wrapping up a whirlwind, four-day visit to Poland and Ukraine with talks with leaders from the Bucharest Nine, a collection of nations in the most eastern parts of the NATO alliance that came together in response to Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
As the war in Ukraine drags on, the Bucharest Nine countries’ anxieties have remained heightened. Many worry Putin could move to take military action against them next if he’s successful in Ukraine.
The alliance includes Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
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