Process completed. Russia withdraws from the treaty on conventional forces in Europe

This Tuesday, Russia completed the process of withdrawing from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (FACE), which it denounced in May, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced.

“The procedure for Russia’s withdrawal from the FACE Treaty has been completed. The international legal document, the validity of which was suspended in 2007, is therefore definitively consigned to history,” the ministry stated. in a statement.

Moscow emphasized that, together with FACE, two other documents lost their validity: the 1990 Budapest Agreement, which set maximum arms limits for each of the Warsaw Pact countries, and the 1996 Agreement that limited the number of forces on the flanks after the collapse of the former Soviet Union .

FACE, once considered the cornerstone of European security, has eliminated the former Soviet Union’s quantitative advantage in conventional weapons in Europe.

The treaty set equal limits on the number of tanks, armored fighting vehicles, heavy artillery, fighter aircraft and attack helicopters that NATO and the Warsaw Pact could deploy between the Atlantic Ocean and the Urals.

The original document was signed by 22 NATO countries and the Soviet Union, but the updated version nine years later, reflecting NATO’s expansion and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, is no longer ratified.

“Taking into account the direct responsibility of NATO countries for instigating the conflict in Ukraine, as well as the admission of Finland to the Alliance and the consideration of a similar request from Sweden, even the formal retention of the FACE Treaty was unacceptable from the eyes of NATO.” from the point of view of Russia’s fundamental security interests,” he emphasized.

The statement added that it can be concluded that “attempts to guarantee military security in Europe without taking into account Russia’s interests will not lead to anything good for the prosecutors.”

Moreover, according to Moscow, attempts to hold on to outdated agreements that do not reflect the new situation are doomed to failure and could lead to the destruction of cooperation mechanisms in the field of arms control.

“Russia is finally saying goodbye to FACE, without regrets and with full confidence that it is right,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs concludes.