Moscow, November 7 – Russia has officially completed the procedure to withdraw from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The statement released by the ministry states that at midnight on November 7, 2023, Russia’s withdrawal from the treaty was finalized. This international legal document, which Russia suspended in 2007, is now officially a thing of the past.
The statement also highlights that two other legally binding agreements related to the CFE, namely the Budapest Agreement of November 3, 1990, on maximum levels of conventional armaments and equipment for six member states of the Warsaw Pact, and the Flank Document of May 31, 1996, have also lost their validity.
The ministry emphasized that Russia currently does not see any possibility of reaching agreements with the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance in the field of arms control, as these countries have “clearly demonstrated their inability to negotiate.”
The CFE was signed on November 19, 1990, in Paris, by representatives of 16 NATO member states and six Warsaw Pact member states. It entered into force on November 9, 1992. Neutral and non-aligned participants of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, now known as the OSCE since 1995) did not participate in the treaty, and the CFE itself was closed in nature. The accession of states that were not part of NATO and the Warsaw Pact at that time was not envisaged.
The CFE established the maximum group and individual levels for NATO and Warsaw Pact countries in five categories of limited armaments and military equipment: battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery, combat aircraft, and attack helicopters. These levels were established not only for the two groups of states as a whole but also for the so-called flank regions – the southern and northern regions – in order to take into account the concerns of these states, primarily Turkey and Norway.
In 1992, the provisions of the CFE were supplemented by obligations of its participants to limit the personnel strength of conventional armed forces in the treaty’s application zone (which included only part of the former USSR – the European part – and the current Russia, as well as part of the territory of Turkey).
