President Vladimir Putin signed a decree denouncing the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). The corresponding document was published on the official Internet portal of legal information.
“Deny the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, signed in Paris on November 19, 1990,” the decree says.
The CFE Treaty was signed in Paris in 1990 by representatives of 16 NATO countries and six countries of the Warsaw Pact Organization (WTO). According to the Treaty, the participating countries were to have an equal number of conventional weapons and military equipment, and the amount of equipment should not exceed the established limit.
After the collapse of the USSR, it was planned to amend the Treaty, but some countries refused to ratify them , Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia refused to join the CFE Treaty at all. In 2007, in Vienna, Russian representatives called the Treaty unviable without fulfilling a number of conditions proposed by Moscow.
In the same year, Putin signed a decree «On the suspension by the Russian Federation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and related international agreements.» In addition, in 2015, Russia stopped participating in the meetings of the Joint Consultative Group on the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.
In fact, Russia ceased to comply with the agreements adopted in 1990, back in 2007, but formally remained a member CFE.