Russia needs about six months to fully withdraw from CFE Treaty — senior diplomat
Russian President Vladimir Putin submitted a bill for the formal denunciation of the CFE Treaty to the State Duma last week
MOSCOW, May 16. /TASS/. Russia will require about six months to complete its withdrawal from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said.
"According to the provisions of the [CFE] treaty, our country will require about six months to complete the full withdrawal procedure," he told a plenary session of the State Duma on Tuesday.
"After terminating all denunciation procedures, we also need to take several other steps regarding the other member states of the CFE. The first step is to notify all member states of the intention to withdraw from the treaty. This is done at least 150 days ahead of the planned date, [the notification] includes a statement on the reasons that necessitated this step," the senior diplomat explained.
"No sooner than three weeks after forwarding the notification, a summit of [CFE] member states is convened to review the issues pertaining to the withdrawal [from the treaty]. There, we will lay out our firm position based on the [relevant] federal law. <…> We will once again publicly reiterate to the NATO countries and the global community that is was the West, by its destructive actions, that has made our commitment to the CFE untenable," Ryabkov pointed out.
Russian President Vladimir Putin submitted a bill for the formal denunciation of the CFE Treaty to the State Duma last week.
Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe
The CFE Treaty was signed in 1990 and amended in 1997. However, the NATO countries never ratified the amended version of the document and have continued to adhere to the outdated 1990 provisions, based on the conventional arms balance between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.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.