MOSCOW, May 10. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has submitted a bill on the denunciation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.
The document was published in the State Duma’s database on Wednesday.
Earlier, the president appointed Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov as his official representative when the CFE treaty denunciation was being considered in parliament.
The explanatory note to the bill reads that that treaty "was a sufficiently efficient and effective tool for the early 1990s to strengthen European security."
"Since the early 1990s, the treaty, which was affected by large-scale military-political changes, primarily associated with NATO’s enlargement, has become largely outdated and out of touch with reality. In order to encourage Western countries to change their attitude towards ensuring European security <…> the treaty was suspended in regard to the Russian Federation. Since 2007, the situation in the field of conventional arms in Europe has noticeably worsened."
It is said that "the United States and its allies are pursuing a policy of military confrontation with Russia, fraught with disastrous repercussions."
"The current state of affairs calls for measures to denounce the treaty and initiate domestic procedures for the withdrawal of the Russian Federation from it, after which the depositary and other participating states will be notified accordingly," the explanatory note said.
The document said that in addition to the treaty, the Russian Federation immediately terminates any related international agreements, such as the Agreement on Maximum Levels for Holdings of Conventional Arms and Equipment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, the Hungarian Republic, the Republic of Poland, Romania and the Czech and Slovak Federal Republics in connection with the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, signed in Budapest on November 3, 1990, and the Document agreed among the States Parties to the CFE Treaty of November 19, 1990, in connection with the Final Document of the First Conference to Review the Operation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and the Concluding Act of the Negotiation on Personnel Strength.
The CFE Treaty was signed in 1990 and adapted in 1997. However, NATO countries did not ratify the adapted version of the CFE and have continued to adhere to the 1990 provisions, based on the conventional arms balance between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. As a result, Russia was compelled to declare a moratorium on implementing the terms of the treaty in 2007.
On March 11, 2015, Russia suspended its participation in meetings of the Joint Consultative Group on the CFE Treaty, completing the process of suspending its membership in the CFE while remaining a purely de jure party to the treaty. Since then, Belarus has represented Russia’s interests in the Joint Consultative Group.