VIENNA, June 30. /TASS/. Western countries sought to blame Moscow for destroying the arms control system during a conference that took place in Vienna on June 29-30 and was dedicated to Russia's withdrawal from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, Konstantin Gavrilov, the head of the Russian delegation at the Vienna talks on military security and arms control, told TASS on Friday.
"Representatives of the collective West could find nothing better to do than to read out highly politicized statements that were prepared based on the US playbook, in which, naturally, they tried to put all the blame for the destruction of the arms control regime on us," he said.
He said the position of EU and NATO representatives has again proven Russia made the right decision because in the conditions of the West’s total "deafness" there can be no talk about arms control.
"One thing is clear: it is impossible to build European security without our country's participation. Sooner or later, the Western hotheads will come to their senses, and they will have no choice but to sit down at the negotiating table. But this time on our terms," Gavrilov said.
On May 29, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on the denunciation of the CFE Treaty, which came into force on June 9.
The treaty was signed in 1990 and modified in 1997. NATO countries did not ratify the modified version of the treaty, continuing to adhere to the 1990 provisions, which contain conventional arms norms based on the balance between NATO and the Warsaw Pact 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 Joint Consultative Group on CFE Treaty, thus completing the process of suspending its membership in the treaty, but it continued to be a party to the treaty from a legal perspective. Since then, Russia's interests in the Joint Consultative Group have been represented by Belarus.