(Reuters) – The United States has destroyed the architecture of international stability by ceasing to honour its commitments and rejecting Russia’s proposals on global security issues, Duma’s speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said on Wednesday.
The Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, will on Wednesday consider President Vladimir Putin’s draft law on suspending Moscow’s participation in the New START treaty. It is expected to rubber-stamp the initiative.
Putin outlined the suspension of the landmark treaty as a warning over Ukraine in a major set-piece speech on Tuesday, as U.S. President Joe Biden vowed to keep supporting and standing up for Ukraine as the first anniversary of the Russian aggression nears.
“By ceasing to comply with its obligations and rejecting our country’s proposals on global security issues, the United States destroyed the architecture of international stability,” Volodin wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
“They plunged the world into a state of conflicts and challenges.”
Moscow has often accused the West, chief among them the United States, of keeping Ukraine hostage and repeating, without evidence, that Russia’s mission is to “demilitarise” and “denazify” its western neighbour.
Kyiv and Western leaders, including Biden, who visited the Ukrainian capital on Monday, reject that narrative as an unfounded pretext for Russia’s land grab, and say Putin must be made to lose his gamble on invasion.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Michael Perry)
