Russia will withdraw from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe on November 7

Russia will finally withdraw from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) on 7 November. About it reported at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.

“Russia has notified all participating States of its decision to withdraw from the CFE Treaty 150 days after the notification was sent. Thus, this will happen at 00:00 on November 7,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The department also noted that along with the denunciation of the CFE Treaty, a number of related international treaties are also terminated – the so-called Budapest Agreement of November 3, 1990, the purpose of which was “to determine the levels of conventional weapons for each of the participants in the then Warsaw Pact”, and the Flank document dated May 31, 1996, which was intended to solve “the problem of flank restrictions that arose in connection with the demise of the USSR.”

May 29, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed federal law on the denunciation of the CFE Treaty. The document was submitted to the lower house of parliament on May 10, and already on May 16 the deputies of the State Duma unanimously adopted it. The document entered into force on June 9. State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin, commenting on the adoption of the bill, said that the United States and the EU, moving NATO to the east, destroyed the global security system. Now the West, pumping Ukraine with weapons, continues to destabilize the situation in the world and provokes a global catastrophe, he believes.

After the signing of the law on denunciation, Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov expelled any direct consequences for Russia, since the mechanism was already inanimate, and Moscow, by this document, brought the situation into line with what is happening de facto. At the same time, Peskov pointed to a “large vacuum” in the field of arms control, “which urgently needs to be filled with new acts of international law.”

The treaty was signed in November 1990 by 16 member states of NATO and the Warsaw Pact (Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the USSR and Czechoslovakia) and took into account the balance of conventional weapons between these two blocs. It provided for the restriction of five categories of weapons and equipment: tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery with a caliber of more than 100 mm, combat aircraft and attack helicopters. The document also provided for the exchange of information and inspection activities in the participating countries.