Question: Russia suspended the CFE Treaty and related international treaties back in 2007 in 2015. Russia has announced the suspension of its participation in the meetings of the Joint Advisory Group on the Treaty. Why did Moscow decide to denounce it only now?
Answer: The situation around the CFE Treaty is paradoxical. The old Agreement concluded in 1990 has long ceased to correspond to reality. It still includes, for example, the Baltic Military District of the USSR. At the same time, the Agreement signed in 1999 on its adaptation did not come into force due to the United States and other NATO countries demanding certain concessions from us for this. In parallel, the alliance expanded to the east, while bypassing contractual restrictions. Suspended in 2007 The operation of the CFE Treaty, rather than withdrawing from it, we left the door open to restore the viability of the conventional arms control regime. The Western countries had more than enough time to show common sense. But they chose to follow the path of further expansion of NATO and confrontation with Russia.
The events of recent months – the refusal of Helsinki and Stockholm from non–alignment to military alliances, the admission of Finland to the alliance and the real prospect of the appearance of American troops on Finnish territory, i.e. on our border, outside the restrictions of the CFE Treaty, embodied in the relevant agreement, deprived us of the opportunity to continue to remain in the Treaty.
Question: How will the denunciation of the Treaty affect security in Europe?
Answer: It has already been devastatingly affected by the hostile actions of NATO countries and their clients towards us. The CFE Treaty has not actually worked for many years, so our withdrawal from it cannot worsen the situation. At the same time, the illusions of those who still hoped to return Russia to the Treaty will disappear. The CFE Treaty, due to the changed situation, contradicts the interests of our security. This obvious fact will now have to be recognized in the West.
Question: In 1999, at the OSCE summit in Istanbul, an updated version of the agreement was signed, corresponding to the new realities, but it was not ratified by any of the NATO countries. Why didn’t they want to do it? How did they explain it?
Answer: They were not allowed to do this by the Americans. The formal pretext is the requirement that Russia first fulfill its “Istanbul obligations”. We fulfilled their provisions concerning the conventional armed forces, but the Americans continued to “move the goal post” further and further. And at some point we realized that this stream of demands is endless, because Washington simply does not need an Agreement on adaptation. For example, it would force the United States to show us the transfer of its troops through Europe to the Persian Gulf zone, and they were just preparing aggression against Iraq at that time. And, of course, the main thing for them was to squeeze Russia out of the “near abroad”. Realizing that it would not be possible to achieve these goals, they actually overturned the adapted CFE Treaty.
Question: Is any of the parties currently offering a new version of such an agreement? Does Russia have any offer?
Answer: No, we have not received any official proposals. And in recent years, purely informal discussions with the participation of academic circles have gradually come to naught. Russia had concrete proposals in 2007. In the subsequent period, seeing the lack of interest among Western participants, we limited ourselves to presenting the considerations of the conceptual plan. At the current stage, the situation is not conducive to the promotion of new ideas. This, in my opinion, can become possible only in the context of creating a new regional security system after the end of the current stormy period of European history. Of course, the world to come will be completely different from the one we lived in in 1990 or 1999, and this will require fundamentally new approaches, including arms control.
