MOSCOW, July 28. /TASS/. Ukraine has suspended its obligations under the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE Treaty), the country’s foreign ministry said.

"We have initiated the suspension of our obligations under the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe as the next step towards consolidating our position following the suspension of the Ottawa Convention," the ministry wrote on its Telegram channel after a meeting of heads of Ukrainian diplomatic missions abroad.

Apart from that, participants in the meeting decided to step up efforts to terminate a number of international agreements with Russia and Belarus, as well as within the CIS.

The CFE Treaty was signed in 1990 and adapted in 1997. The treaty set limits on the number of conventional weapons and hardware, such as tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery, combat helicopters, and warplanes to maintain balance between the Warsaw Treaty Organization, also known as the Warsaw Pact, a Soviet-led military and political association of European socialist countries, and NATO.

Following the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and then the collapse of the former Soviet Union and amid NATO’s expansion, the treaty’s mechanisms meant to maintain parity between the two blocs lost their relevance. With this in mind, Russia initiated the Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which was signed on November 19, 1999. The agreement replaced the bloc-to-bloc limitations with a system of national and territorial ceilings on conventional weapons. The adapted version of the CFE Treaty was ratified only by Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine (the latter did not submit its ratification papers to the depository) and did not come into force.