Putin thought his enemies would ‘roll over’ but he was wrong, Biden says

Vladimir Putin thought his enemies would “roll over” but instead he “met the will of America and nations everywhere who refused to accept a world governed by fear”, Joe Biden has said.

The US president is speaking from the gardens of Warsaw’s Royal Castle in Poland a day after he made a highly-secretive and historic visit to Kyiv in Ukraine.

“I can report: Kyiv stands strong, Kyiv stands proud, it stands tall and, most important, it stands free,” Mr Biden said this evening.

Referring to the US and western support for Ukraine he said: “Yes we (said we) would stand up for sovereignty and we did…. yes we (we said we) would stand up for democracy and we did.”

It comes after Mr Biden said on Monday that Washington would provide Kyiv with a new military aid package worth $500m (£412m) as he was pictured walking in the city with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

It came before Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed the West for starting the war in Ukraine and claimed his country responded with force “in order to stop it” in a state of union address today.

Describing his aims as the first anniversary of the conflict nears, Mr Putin said Ukraine was in talks with the West about weapon supplies before Russia invaded its neighbour on 24 February last year.

“I would like to emphasise when Russia tried to find a peaceful solution they were playing with the lives of people and they were playing a dirty game,” Mr Putin said.

He said Russia decided to “protect its people and history” by conducting a “special military operation step-by-step” – as he warned that Moscow will “continue to resolve the objectives that are before us”.

The Russian president has always referred to the invasion as a “special military operation” since it began last year.

“I would like to repeat, they started the war and we used force in order to stop it,” he said in the address.

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Biden’s secretive trip to Kyiv was disguised as a ‘golf tourney’ – here’s how it unfolded

Mr Putin also announced that Russia was suspending its participation in a key nuclear treaty with the US which limits the two sides’ strategic nuclear arsenals.

The New START treaty with the US caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the US and Russia can deploy.

Mr Putin said Russia was not fully withdrawing from the treaty and said Moscow must stand ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the US does so.

Meanwhile, earlier in his visit to Poland today, Mr Biden reaffirmed the United States’ dedication to European security as he met Polish President Andrzej Duda during a series of consultations with allies to prepare for an even more complicated stage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We have to have security in Europe,” he said at the presidential palace in Warsaw on Tuesday.

“It’s that basic, that simple, that consequential.”

Mr Biden described NATO as “maybe the most consequential alliance in history” and he said it is “stronger than it’s ever been” despite Mr Putin’s hopes it would fracture over the war in Ukraine.

Mr Duda praised Mr Biden’s trip to Kyiv as “spectacular”, saying it “boosted (the) morale of Ukraine’s defenders”.

In his speech in Kyiv on Monday, Mr Biden said Mr Putin had believed Ukraine was “weak and the West was divided” and “thought he could outlast us” but added – “he was dead wrong”.

Mr Zelenskyy said he discussed long-range weapons with Mr Biden and described negotiations as “very fruitful”.

The US president had travelled to Kyiv on a 10-hour train ride from Poland after a journey from Washington DC that was shrouded in secrecy.

The only two journalists allowed on the trip were sworn to secrecy and had their phones taken off them.

An email telling the journalists when to arrive at the relevant air base was disguised as an invite to a golf “tourney”.