MINSK, April 17. /TASS/. The House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Belarusian National Assembly (parliament), has adopted the first reading of a bill suspending the country's participation in the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), the press service reported.

"[We] hereby decide to suspend the country’s participation in the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe of November 19, 1990," the document said. The bill will now go to the Council of the Republic (the upper chamber of the parliament) for approval, after which it will be sent to the country's president for signing.

In early April, the press service of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko reported that the head of state gave the okay to submit a bill to the House of Representatives on the suspension of the country's participation in the CFE Treaty. The draft was initiated by the Council of Ministers. The press service quoted the president as saying that the country fully meets its obligations under the treaty. It recalled that in 2022 the Czech Republic and in 2023 Poland decided to suspend the CFE Treaty with regard to Belarus, and Minsk retaliated in kind to these two countries in October 2023. Moreover, in November 2023, NATO countries decided to indefinitely suspend their participation in the treaty, which, according to Belarus, essentially means the treaty itself is suspended.

The press service said that the bill "provides for the suspension of the CFE Treaty, which does not mean Belarus is withdrawing from it or the cessation of military implementation of internal procedures due to it." The Belarusian Defense Ministry said that Minsk did not plan to increase the number of military equipment and weapons in connection with the CFE Treaty in the near future.

The CFE Treaty was ratified by Belarus and entered into force in 1992. It provides for limitations on overall levels of conventional armaments and equipment in five main categories (tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery, attack helicopters, and combat aircraft), as well as mechanisms for verifying compliance with commitments (information exchange and inspections). The CFE Treaty was initiated in 1990 and amended in 1997. NATO countries did not ratify the adapted version of the document and continued to adhere to the 1990 provisions, which contained conventional arms norms from the balance between the alliance and the now defunct Warsaw Pact organization. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the law denouncing the CFE Treaty on May 29, 2023; it entered into force on June 9. Moscow has repeatedly stated that the blame for the treaty’s termination will fall on the United States and its allies, who have chosen the path of confrontation.