This Tuesday Biden and Putin spoke almost at the same time. First the Russian president and then his US counterpart. And both on the same subject: the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its consequences just days after the first anniversary of the start of the conflict.
From the Russian side the speech was more aggressive. It marked the provisional suspension, Vladimir Putin clarified, of the application of the second START 3 agreement, which limits the amount of nuclear weapons that each country can store, and provides for mutual inspection of arsenals.
“If the United States conducts nuclear tests with some new type of strategic weapon, Russia will also conduct tests” of that kind. Although, “we won’t be the first to do it. No one should harbor the dangerous illusion that strategic global parity can be destroyed,” the Russian leader emphasized at a meeting of Parliament.
Almost a year after his first visit to Poland, Joe Biden reaffirmed in Warsaw that the Western world remains steadfast in its support for Ukraine, whose capital he visited for a few hours the day before.
“The democracies of the world will continue behind democracy today, tomorrow and forever. kyiv is still strong. kyiv is still proud,” the president reaffirmed at the Royal Castle in Warsaw before an audience of thousands of Poles and Ukrainians who waited for about two hours to see and hear the president.
Moscow has said that the coincidence of the speeches was just that: a coincidence, and that Putin did not decide to speak publicly this Tuesday just because Biden visited kyiv and Warsaw. “The United States does not impose President Putin’s agenda,” Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov told MSNBC.
Biden was clear. He advocated the participation of NATO in the European defense in the conflict. “We must have a European security. It is basic, simple and accordingly with our thinking”, he reaffirmed. It is that, he specified, “NATO is the largest consistent European alliance, a direct response to Putin, who considered the Atlantic alliance” a fracture in the war in Ukraine “.
“They [Occidente] they want to impose a strategic defeat on us and, at the same time, seize our nuclear facilities,” Putin had said.
This counterpoint would later be defined by David Gerben, who was an adviser to four US presidents, both Republicans and Democrats, as a speech that could mark the beginning of a “new Cold War.”
“It gives me the idea that it is a new return to the past,” he stressed to CNN.
While this was happening in Moscow and Warsaw, in Beijing the Chinese Foreign Ministry revealed that there will be a meeting between Putin and President Xi Jingping, although without a set date.
Xi has been in constant communication with Putin, but not a firm stance on the Ukrainian conflict. “They will meet soon. A Cold War policy is not convenient for anyone. A path of peace must be defined,” said the main Chinese spokesman, Wang Wenbin, on his country’s television.
It seems that the drums of the Cold War begin to resound, bringing from history an old conflict that was ideological and is now imperial and military.
