MINSK, September 20. /TASS/. The Council of the Republic, the upper chamber of the Belarusian parliament, has voted to suspend the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty implementation with regard to Poland and the Czech Republic, the chamber’s press service said.
"The Council of the Republic approved the draft bill," the statement says.
The document, previously approved by the parliament’s lower chamber, the House of Representatives, will soon go to the country’s President Alexander Lukashenko for signing.
Earlier, a relevant committee of the parliament’s lower chamber said Belarus had the power to suspend the treaty with Poland and the Czech Republic, because these two countries opted not to fulfill their obligations under the treaty with regard to Belarus. At the same time, Minsk will continue to honor its commitments to other signatories of the treaty.
The Czech Republic informed Belarus about its decision to refrain from CFE commitments in August 2022. Poland followed suit in April 2023.
The treaty was signed in 1990 and was later updated 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.
On May 29, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on the denunciation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), which came into force on June 9.