The Russian leader described the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s calls for Russia to ‘comply with the START Treaty’ and allow Western experts to inspect military and nuclear facilities in the current confrontational situation ‘a theater of absurdity.’

The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) between Moscow and Washington was signed in a different situation, when the parties declared that they did not consider themselves adversaries, but ‘that’s all in the past,’ he stressed.

After that, our relations reached a level where Russia and the United States declared that they no longer considered each other enemies. It was very good, Putin recalled.

The treaty in force in 2010 contains crucial provisions on the indivisibility of security, the direct link between strategic offensive and defensive weapons, but all that has been forgotten, he pointed out.

The United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and our relations, which is very important, have degraded, the Russian president stated.

The Defense Ministry and the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom) should prepare in case they need to conduct nuclear tests, but Moscow will not be the first to carry them out, he said Tuesday in his message to the Federal Assembly.

Of course we will not be the first ones to conduct the tests, but if the United States conducts them, so will we, Putin stressed in his speech.

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