In 2010, former President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev signed the New START treaty, placing caps on the number of nuclear warheads the U.S. and Russia can position. Now, President Vladimir Putin announced he is suspending Russia’s obligations under the pact, accusing the U.S. and its allies of openly declaring the goal of Russia’s defeat in Ukraine.

Straight Arrow News contributor Peter Zeihan compares current relations between the two superpowers to the Cold War days of the early 1950s.

Excerpted from Peter’s Feb. 22 “Zeihan on Geopolitics” newsletter:

Most of us have come to expect that anytime Putin gives a speech, nothing good will come out of it…and his one-year war anniversary address to parliament was riddled with bad news.

Putin announced that Russia has formally withdrawn from the START Treaty, the original major strategic arms reduction treaty that served as the only legal and diplomatic basis for US & Russian relations to exist.

With that gone, we’re edging our way back to the early cold war days and we shouldn’t expect any meaningful conversations to occur until the military position in Ukraine shifts one way or another.

On top of Putin backing out of the START Treaty, he justified his war on Ukraine by saying he was reclaiming ancestral lands, which is basically rule #1 for why you SHOULDN’T go to war. For anyone in the western world who was still on the fence about Russia, they won’t be anymore.