VIENNA, June 30. /TASS/. Russia's pullout from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) automatically terminates its participation in the Budapest agreement of November 3, 1990 on the maximum levels of conventional weapons and equipment of the six former Warsaw Treaty Organization member-states, Konstantin Gavrilov, Russia’s chief delegate to the Vienna talks on military security and arms control, said on Friday.
"[The Budapest agreement] is inextricably linked to the CFE Treaty, and only the treaty’s signatories can implement it. [It] loses force for Russia precisely due to its pullout from the CFE Treaty. This circumstance relieves Russia of the need for complying with separate procedures necessary for the withdrawal from the Budapest agreement and, in particular, to explain the reasons for this step relating to the contents of this very document," he stressed.
Russia will cease to be a party to the agreement on November 7, 2023. Gavrilov explained that in light of the "radical military and political changes in Europe" that have been taking place since the 1990s, the Budapest agreement "has become an anachronism" because during all these years "the erosion of arms control continued against the background of deepening division lines in Europe."
Russia’s pullout from CFE Treaty
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law denouncing the CFE Treaty on May 29 and it took effect on June 9.
The treaty was signed in 1990 and adapted in 1997. NATO countries have not ratified the adapted version of this document and continued to adhere to the 1990 provisions, which contained conventional arms standards stemming from the balance between NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organization. As a result, Russia was forced to declare a moratorium on the implementation of the agreement in 2007. On March 11, 2015, Russia suspended its participation in meetings of the CFE Treaty Joint Consultative Group, thus completing the process of suspending its membership in the treaty, but remained its signatory in purely legal terms. Since then, Belarus has represented Russia's interests in the Joint Consultative Group.