However, it is not yet clear exactly when the discussion of this issue will begin in the State Duma and the Federation Council. As Leonid Slutsky, head of the Duma’s International Affairs Committee, said, this could happen as early as May 16. Let’s see what type of contract it is.
The CFE Treaty was signed in November 1990 by representatives of 22 countries. 16 of them at the time were members of NATO (Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Denmark, Iceland, Spain, Italy, Canada, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, USA, Turkey and France), six others were members of the Warsaw Pact (Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, USSR and Czechoslovakia).
CFE participants have agreed to limit the number of battle tanks, armored fighting vehicles, artillery, attack helicopters and combat aircraft they have in the territory from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains. Both groups were supposed to have an equal number of weapons and military equipment, while each country had its own quotas.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, it was at the time a fairly effective tool for strengthening European security. The adoption of the CFE Treaty has, so to speak, drawn a line under the era of confrontation between the blocs. The treaty establishes a balance of power between the Warsaw Pact and NATO at lower levels and limits the possibilities for the deployment of conventional weapons by the two alliances along the line of contact. It enabled a rapid and balanced reduction of a large number of surplus weapons and equipment inherited by the participating countries from the Cold War era.
In the context of the collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, several documents were prepared which were supposed to support the operation of the CFE Treaty. One of them was the 1999 agreement on the adaptation of the CFE Treaty. It aimed to resolve the military imbalance resulting from the expansion of NATO and the entry into the alliance of the former members of the Warsaw Pact. It was supposed to set limits not by groups, as before, but by countries.
At the same time, the adapted CFE Treaty was to be open for accession by any European State participating in the OSCE. The document has been signed by 30 countries, but only Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine have ratified it. The other parties to the CFE Treaty have blocked the ratification under the pretext of the presence of Russian troops on the territory of Georgia and Moldova. And a number of countries have even refused to join the CFE Treaty (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Albania, Slovenia and Croatia).
In line with the position taken by NATO countries, Russia decided in 2007 to impose a moratorium on the CFE treaty until Western countries bring their armed forces into line with the treaty and ratify it. This meant the end of mutual military inspection. At the same time, Russia continued, on a voluntary basis, to provide other parties to the treaty with a brief summary of the availability of weapons and equipment (this continued until 2011).
The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly noted in recent years that the treaty has dragged on and that Russia has no intention of returning to implementing the CFE treaty. Instead, it was proposed to create a fundamentally new conventional arms control regime in Europe that would meet modern needs, exclude the possibility of solving international problems by force, and be based on the principles of equal and indivisible security. , balancing the rights and obligations of parties. However, the West has moved towards the “containment” of Russia and a military build-up on the “eastern flank” of NATO.
As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted at the end of 2022, the alliance “constantly builds potentials and means, shifting them to Russia. Maneuvers are carried out in which our country is in fact openly declared an adversary. L nato is actively expanding its activities in the post-Soviet space, announced claims to the Indo-Pacific region, and now also to Central Asia.
In an attempt to prevent the situation in the Euro-Atlantic region from deteriorating further, Russia presented new proposals for security guarantees in 2021, but they were ignored by the West.
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