By Nandita Bose and Guy Faulconbridge
WARSAW/MOSCOW (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden will meet leaders of NATO’s eastern flank on Wednesday in a show of support after Russia’s president suspended a nuclear arms control treaty and accused the United States of turning the Ukraine war into a global conflict.
With Russia due to mark the first anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine on Friday, Ukrainian schools took their classes online for the rest of the week for fear of an upsurge in Russian missile attacks.
Biden has staged a surprise visit to Kyiv this week and rallied NATO allies in Poland, where he proclaimed untiring support for Ukraine.
“When Russia invaded, it wasn’t just Ukraine being tested. The whole world faced a test for the ages,” Biden said in the Royal Castle of Warsaw on Tuesday.
The United States and its NATO allies had shown they were prepared to stand up for sovereignty, democracy and people’s right to live free from aggression, he said.
“There should be no doubt: Our support for Ukraine will not waver, NATO will not be divided, and we will not tire.”
In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who argues that NATO represents an existential threat to Russia, delivered a warning to the West over Ukraine by suspending its last major nuclear arms control treaty with the United States.
Putin told Russia’s military and political elite Washington was turning the Ukraine “special military operation” into a global conflict and announced the suspension of Russia’s participation in the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty).
Russia’s foreign ministry said later it would continue abiding by the restrictions outlined in the treaty on the number of nuclear warheads it could have deployed.
Putin said the West should realise that Russia, whose forces Ukraine has vowed to drive out of all of its territory, could not be defeated on the battlefield.
“They intend to transform a local conflict into a phase of global confrontation,” he said. “This is exactly how we understand it all and we will react accordingly, because in this case we are talking about the existence of our country.”
Biden rejected Russia’s assertion that Western allies were seeking to control or destroy Russia and accused Moscow of crimes against humanity such as targeting civilians and rape.
Russia has denied accusations by Ukraine and its allies of war crimes and targeting civilians.
The speaker of Russia’s Duma lower house of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, said Washington had destroyed the architecture of international stability by rejecting Russia’s proposals on global security.
The Duma will on Wednesday rubber stamped Putin’s draft law on suspending participation in the New START treaty.
‘FIND A SOLUTION’
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Putin’s suspension of the nuclear treaty was “deeply unfortunate and irresponsible”. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said it made the world more dangerous and urged Putin to reconsider.
China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun told reporters that the New START treaty and other instruments were important for the global security architecture and “the parties concerned should continue to negotiate with each other in finding a good solution”.
Under the treaty that expires in 2026, the United States and Russia may check the other’s nuclear arsenal although tension over Ukraine had already halted inspections.
NATO allies and other supporters have sent Ukraine tens of billions of dollars worth of arms and ammunition, with modern battle tanks promised and some mulling President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s appeals for fighter jets and longer-range missiles.
On Wednesday, Biden will meet leaders of the Bucharest Nine, NATO’s eastern members that joined the alliance after years of Cold War domination by the then Soviet Union. They include many of the strongest supporters of military aid to Ukraine.
Biden is expected to reaffirm security commitments and discuss support for Ukraine before he returns to Washington.
FIGHTING
Russia suffered three major battlefield reverses in Ukraine last year but still controls around a fifth of the country. It has launched a massive offensive in recent weeks in eastern provinces, so far making only marginal gains despite some of the heaviest losses of the war.
Ukraine’s military said Bakhmut city, the focus of Russian advances in the eastern region of Donetsk, came under shelling, along with 20 other settlements in the area.
The governor of the neighbouring region of Luhansk said attacks around the town of Kreminna were intense.
“At Kreminna yesterday the enemy tried to break through with the help of a company of tanks and infantry,” Serhiy Haidai said on Ukrainian television. “Several of their tanks remained on the battlefield – ours simply destroyed them. The breakthrough failed, the situation stabilized.”
Reuters was not able to independently verify the report.
Outspoken Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin chastised Russian military leaders, accusing them of depriving his Wagner fighters of munitions in what he called a treasonous attempt to destroy his military company.
The Russian defence ministry rejected his accusation about blocking ammunition as “absolutely untrue”.
The biggest land war in Europe since World War Two has displaced millions, left cities, towns and villages in ruins and disrupted the global economy. The U.N. rights office has recorded more than 8,000 civilians killed, a figure it describes as the “tip of the iceberg”.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk and Reuters bureaux; writing by Grant McCool and Philippa Fletcher; Editing by David Gregorio, Michael Perry, Peter Graff)
