Monitoring Desk:The Russian Federation has left Conventional Armed Forces in Europe treaty, indicates Russian Foreign Office statement issued from Moscow on Tuesday evening.
“The Russian Federation has taken the decision to halt its participation in meetings of the [consulting group] from March 11, 2015. Therefore, Russia is ending its actions in the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, announced in 2007, completely,” a statement from the Foreign Ministry said.
Meanwhile RT Russian indicated that Moscow has announced it is “completely” ending activities under the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. Russia’s participation in the treaty was first halted in 2007.
Starting from Wednesday, Belarus will be representing Moscow’s interests in the group, TASS news agency reported
It may be mentioned that Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) was negotiated and concluded during the last years of the Cold War and established comprehensive limits on key categories of conventional military equipment in Europe (from the Atlantic to the Urals) and mandated the destruction of excess weaponry. The treaty proposed equal limits for the two “groups of states-parties”, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact.
Russian Tv 1 reported that the original CFE Treaty, signed in 1990 by 16 NATO and six Warsaw Pact, setting equal ceilings for each bloc on key categories of conventional armaments, with tanks, combat armored vehicles, artillery, assault helicopters and combat aircraft among them.
It may be mentioned that in November 2014, Moscow suspended the implementation of the CFE Treaty.
