MOSCOW, May 5. /TASS/. The Russian government has approved a proposal to denounce the Treaty on Open Skies and resolved to submit it to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, according to the document posted on the government’s legal information web portal on Wednesday.

"To approve the proposal on denouncing the Treaty on Open Skies signed in the city of Helsinki on March 24, 1992, and submit it to the Russian president for introducing it into the State Duma," says the document dated May 4 and signed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced on January 15 that Moscow had launched internal state procedures for exiting the Treaty on Open Skies. The Russian diplomatic agency explained the move by the absence of progress in removing obstacles for the Treaty’s continuation in new conditions after the US quit it in November 2020. The US Department of State stated in April that Washington had not decided yet on rejoining the Open Skies Treaty.

For years, Washington had been accusing Moscow of exercising a selective approach to implementing the Open Skies Treaty and violating a number of its provisions. Russia had been laying counterclaims on the Treaty’s implementation.