Monitoring Desk: The Russian Federation has left Conventional Armed Forces in Europe treaty and has asked Belarus to represent Russian interests in the group from Wednesday, reports Dispatch News Desk news agency.
Russian Foreign Office released the statement on Tuesday evening after heavy military drill by NATO forces in Latvia.
Completely leaving this treaty by Russia means that it does not fall under the points of treaty of having equal ceilings weapons on key categories of conventional armaments, with tanks, combat armored vehicles, artillery, assault helicopters and combat aircraft among them. For instance, under the treaty, each side is supposed to have no more than 16,500 tanks or 27,300 armored combat vehicles in active units.
The 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.
“For many years the Russian Federation has been doing everything possible to maintain… the treaty, initiated talks on its adaptation and ratified the adaptation agreement,” Moscow said Tuesday, adding that all such efforts have been dismissed by NATO in favor of the alliance’s expansion.
It may be mentioned that in November 2014, Moscow suspended the implementation of the CFE Treaty.
