Moscow has considered canceling the European Conventional Forces Treaty

Russian President Vladimir Putin has appointed Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as his official representative in the process of Russia considering whether to withdraw from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE).

Photo: VLADIMIR SMIRNOV / SPUTNIK / AFP

The decree to this effect was published on Wednesday on the official Russian legal information portal.

According to the document, the issue will be considered by both chambers of the Russian parliament. On Wednesday, Putin introduced the bill initiating the termination of the contract in the lower house of the Russian parliament. Russia is currently suspending its participation in the CFE Treaty.

According to the rationale of the bill published on Wednesday in the database of the Russian State Duma (lower house), the CFE treaty “was a fairly efficient and effective tool for strengthening European security in the early 1990s”, but significant military and political changes have taken place since then – primarily the expansion of NATO – as a result, it “became obsolete in many respects and lost its connection with reality”. According to the document, the purpose of suspending Russian participation was to encourage Western countries to change their attitude towards European security. “The situation with conventional weapons in Europe has noticeably deteriorated since 2007,” the text reads.

According to the document, “the United States and its allies are pursuing a course of military confrontation with Russia, which will have disastrous consequences.”

The current situation requires that we take steps to terminate the treaty and initiate domestic procedures for the withdrawal of the Russian Federation from the treaty, upon completion of which we will notify the depositary and the other States Parties

– sounds the justification.

The document points out that for Moscow, the scope of the related international treaties will automatically cease at the same time as the CFE agreement.

On July 13, 2007, Putin signed the decree suspending Moscow’s participation in the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and related international conventions, and on November 29, 2007, the Russian law was adopted.

On March 10, 2015, Russia announced that it would suspend its participation in the meetings of the Joint Consultative Group on the Implementation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. However, Moscow officially remained a party to the treaty.

The treaty was signed on November 19, 1990 in Paris by 16 NATO member states (Belgium, Great Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Canada, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the United States), as well as the proxies of the six member states of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia). The agreement entered into force on November 9, 1992.