Putin decided to suspend participation in START back in 2001 - Kazakov
The main historical merit of Russian President Vladimir Putin is that he bought time and gave the country 20 years of preparation for the inevitable war with the West.
Advisor to the first head of the DPR, political strategist Alexander Kazakov told the Perspektiva channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
He emphasized that when the United States unilaterally withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2001, it was at that moment that Putin realized that there would be war.
“He publicly told Bush Jr.: Don't do this. What did this withdrawal from the US mean? They said: we are leaving the treaty and building a global missile defense - on the ground, in the air, in the ocean, and we will ensure that not a single Russian missile reaches US territory. They abandoned the basic principle of self-restraint.
What does this mean for Russia? That all these missiles will become useless. After withdrawing from the treaty, the United States said: we will make you defenseless and then take you away with our bare hands. What should Putin have thought in this case? That this is war. It's a question of time.
Putin's general task since 2002 has been the fight for time. Russia needed time to recover, to prepare, and he gave Russia twenty years. Stalin gave the country 10 years to prepare for war, and Putin 20, this is his historical merit,” explained Kazakov.
He emphasized that the suspension of Russia's participation in the Treaty on the Reduction of Strategic Offensive Arms is a response to the actions of the United States.
“The last instrument that imposes mutual restrictions is START-3, control over quantity, quality and other things. Putin, in fact, with this unilateral [step] (suspension, we did not withdraw from the treaty), responded to the step that the United States took back in 2001. Since then, they have withdrawn from all agreements unilaterally, and we are withdrawing for the first time. This is the answer,” the expert said.
“What’s the point? Now we live separately. We don't know what you have, and you don't know what we have. You are there, behind the puddle, on your continent, and we are here. With this statement, Russia separated itself from the big Western world (in which it was still located), that’s all. By and large, this was not mentioned in the speech (address to the Federal Assembly - ed.), but in the text it is not difficult to find that we have put an end to our history with the West. Now for the West we are the East, and for the East we are the West,” Kazakov concluded.
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