Russia formally withdraws from key post-Cold War European armed forces treaty
Russia on Tuesday formally withdrew from a landmark security treaty which limited key categories of conventional armed forces, blaming the United States for undermining post-Cold War security with the enlargement of the NATO military alliance, Reuters reports.
The 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), signed a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, placed verifiable limits on categories of conventional military equipment that NATO and the then-Warsaw Pact could deploy.
The treaty was designed to prevent either side of the Cold War from amassing forces for a swift offensive against the other in Europe, but was unpopular in Moscow as it blunted the Soviet Union’s advantage in conventional weapons.
Russia suspended participation in the treaty in 2007 and halted active participation in 2015. More than a year after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin in May signed a decree denounced the pact.
Russia’s foreign ministry said Russia had formally withdrawn from the pact at midnight - and that the treaty was now “history”.
“The CFE Treaty was concluded at the end of the Cold War, when the formation of a new architecture of global and European security based on cooperation seemed possible, and appropriate attempts were made,” the ministry said.
Russia said the U.S. push for enlargement of NATO had led to alliance countries “openly circumventing” the treaty’s group restrictions, and added that the admission of Finland into NATO and Sweden’s application meant the treaty was dead.
