Biden in Warsaw: Nato support stronger than ever

Presidents Biden and Putin both delivered defiant speeches earlier today ahead of the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, putting the prospect of a Kyiv-Moscow peace deal further away than ever.

Speaking in Warsaw, the US President declared that “Putin’s craving and lust for land and power will fail,” and Western support for Ukraine “will not waver”. After a day of talks with his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda, and other leaders of Nato’s easternmost members, Biden insisted that Nato’s support for Ukraine was more united than ever. 

In a rousing address given to a crowd of around 30,000 outside the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Biden painted the war as a battle between democracy and autocracy and a generational struggle for freedom. The Kremlin, he said, has underestimated the resolve of those defending freedom. 

“One year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of Kyiv,” said Biden. Referencing his symbolic trip to the Ukrainian capital yesterday, he continued: “Well I’ve just come from Kyiv and I can report Kyiv stands strong, it stands tall and, most important, it stands free.”

Yet the US president wasn’t the only one to accuse his opponent of making false calculations about the war. Hours earlier, President Putin delivered his state of the nation address to the Russian parliament, gloating that the West has underestimated Moscow’s ability to withstand sanctions. The goal [for the West] is to make our citizens suffer,” said Putin. “But their calculations were out.”

There is some truth to this. A year on from the invasion, the rouble is stronger than it was before the invasion and the IMF estimates that the Russian economy contracted by just 2.2% last year – far below its prediction last July of a 6% contraction in Russian GDP. As Ian Stewart writes in Reaction, Russian oil shunned by the EU has found ready customers in China, India and Turkey. And high energy and other commodity prices, themselves fuelled by the invasion of Ukraine, have propped up the Kremlin’s revenues and bolstered the rouble.

Yet Moscow’s ability to withstand Western sanctions was the only one of Putin’s gloats with any substance to it. In light of the Russian army’s series of humiliating setbacks in Ukraine, Putin’s assertion that it is “impossible” to beat Russia on the battlefield sounded downright delusional. As Biden reminded his Polish audience: “From Kherson to Kharkiv, Ukrainian fighters have reclaimed their land.” 

Only today, in one of the most serious indications of infighting over military failures, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin-linked tycoon who heads the Wagner Group, accused Putin’s defence chiefs of a “betrayal of the motherland” for depriving the private paramilitary group of munitions. 

Despite Russia’s reputation as a military superpower lying in tatters, Putin’s speech was certainly not the address of a leader close to accepting defeat. Instead, he engaged in his usual rhetoric, accusing the West of “starting the war” and reinstating Moscow’s duty to free Ukrainians from a “neo-Nazi regime”. He also declared that Russia would be suspending its participation in the last remaining nuclear arms deal between Moscow and Washington. (The New Start Treaty limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads that both sides can deploy, and gives each country the power to inspect the other).

Both Biden and Putin’s speeches served as a stark reminder that there is no end to the war in sight. Putin may have underestimated both the strength of Western support and the resolve of Ukrainians as they fight for national survival. Yet he appears determined to double down on his failures. 

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