Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law denouncing the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). Relevant document published Monday, May 29 on the Legal Information Portal.
“To denounce the treaty on conventional armed forces in Europe, signed in the city of Paris on November 19, 1990”, specifies the decree.
The Kremlin, commenting on the denunciation of the CFE treaty, said that this measure would have no direct consequences, since the treaty was not actually in force.
“It was already an inanimate mechanism and, believe me, it was not the fault of the Russian Federation. Therefore, in this case, the Russian side simply brought the situation into de facto compliance,” explained Russian President’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov (quote from TASS ).
The Kremlin spokesman added that in the area of arms control and strategic stability, “a big vacuum is being created” which “must be filled with new acts of global law.” “But it requires working relationships with a number of states, which are now absent through no fault of ours,” he explained (as quoted by RBC ).
On May 10, Putin presented the Duma with a bill on denunciation of the CFE treaty. The explanatory note to the document stated that since the beginning of the 1990s, the treaty “under the influence of large-scale military-political changes, mainly related to the expansion of NATO, has largely become obsolete and has lost touch with reality”.
In May, the CFE Treaty Denunciation Bill was passed unanimously by the State Duma, with 405 deputies voting in favour. Later, a similar solution accepted Federation Council.
Chairman of the State Duma’s International Affairs Committee, Leonid Slutsky, said that “the CFE Treaty has already gone down in history.” According to him, “the collective West has trampled on the treaty, which offered an excellent opportunity for the development of comprehensive security in Europe”.
About the CFE Treaty
The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe was signed in Paris on November 19, 1990 by representatives of sixteen NATO member countries and six member states of the Warsaw Pact: Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Denmark , Iceland, Spain, Italy, Canada, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, United States, Turkey, France, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, USSR and Czechoslovakia.
The agreement provided restrictions for participating countries on the number of military equipment, including tanks, artillery installations, planes and helicopters.
In 1999, it was decided to adapt the CFE Treaty, but only four countries have ratified the adapted treaty – Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
Russia suspended its participation in the CFE Treaty in 2007, having already recognized it as non-viable, but officially continued to remain a member. In the same year, Putin signed a decree “On the suspension by the Russian Federation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and related international treaties”. In 2015, Russia stopped participating in meetings of the Joint CFE Advisory Group.
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A very apt response to Western Europe hypocrisy.