/ world today news/ Vladimir Putin signed an order to start the final procedure for denouncing the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). After approval by both houses of the Russian parliament, this treaty will finally go where the rest of the relics of the era of “friendship, cooperation and openness” with NATO lie – in the dustbin.
The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe was born way back in 1990 at the height of the “partnership” with the West, even before the collapse of the Soviet Union and at a time when the Warsaw Pact still existed. The agreement was intended by the signatories to minimize the possibility of an attack by superior forces of one military bloc against another that could lead to the use of nuclear weapons. In this regard, the treaty specifies specific limitations on the number of certain types of weapons that can be deployed along the demarcation line in the territory from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains, the Ural River and the Caspian Sea. In addition, the number of weapons in these territories for both blocs had to be equal.
According to the beautiful white paper on which the treaty was written, the USSR and its allies undertook to allow NATO inspectors to enter their territory to recalculate military equipment and assess its combat readiness: strategic partnership always has its price.
But the USSR collapsed and so did the Warsaw Pact. In an accelerated mode, to the applause of the free world, the non-CFTA Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia joined NATO, followed by the disintegrated Czechoslovakia in the form of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, as well as Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
As a result of simple manipulations, the ratio of conventional weapons between NATO and Russia (as the successor of the USSR and its treaties) was three to one in favor of the North Atlantic Alliance.
This suited NATO quite well, but not Russia, in connection with which, at a conference in Istanbul in 1999, Moscow demanded that appropriate adjustments be made to the CFE Treaty to restore the status quo. However, a number of NATO countries refused to ratify them, and Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia did not want to join the treaty at all.
As a result, in 2007 Russia convened an extraordinary conference of CFE member states in Vienna, where it stated that the treaty was meaningless without Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia joining, reducing the total level of the countries’ weapons and equipment from NATO for parity with Russia, as well as the fulfillment of a number of other conditions.
Russia has argued that NATO is actually already well above the threshold levels for conventional weapons set out in the 1990 treaty. That the former Warsaw Pact allies have not re-registered their weapons against the NATO quota. That the armed forces of the Baltic countries are a “grey area”. That Russia is put in a disadvantageous position where Russian quotas can be controlled by the countries included in this agreement, but Moscow cannot do the same. In addition, Russia requested that conventional weapons at US military bases located in Bulgaria and Romania be taken into account in the calculations.
The US was terribly offended and declared that it was by no means impossible to count its bases, since they are temporary – today they are there, tomorrow they are not. Naturally, this was a blatant lie, as were most of the assurances of the United States: as a result, details emerged from the US agreements with Romania and Bulgaria, where the bases were directly called permanent.
After receiving a free and civilized “no” to all our proposals, in 2007 Russia announced a moratorium on the implementation of the CFE Treaty “until the NATO countries ratify the Adaptation Agreement and begin to implement this document in good faith”, and from 2015 . has refused to participate in joint consultations. Amusingly, in the US State Department’s 2022 CFE report, the United States accused Russia of violating its terms, complaining that a bad and treacherous Russia created a dangerous situation that arose “despite US and NATO diplomatic efforts to persuade Russia to come back to fulfill the conditions.”
At the same time, our non-partners forgot to note that it was Russia up to a certain point that strictly fulfilled its obligations under the CFE Treaty, including during the period of the war on terrorism in Chechnya, exposing its flanks.
Anyway, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, we don’t want to appear “as if we are participating in the theater of the absurd”, now we are approaching the long-awaited finale of this tragi-comedy.
Naturally, there will be endless apprehensions against us from the West and its puppets, we will again be accused of “destroying the European security architecture” and at the same time berated for the oppression of LGBT people.
But we know how to read and periodically re-read the NATO manifesto on relations with Russia, where it is written in black and white that “the Russian Federation is the most significant and direct threat to the security of the Alliance, as well as to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area.”
For NATO, we are the main, direct and immediate enemies with whom a hot war is already being waged.
Under these conditions, the only treaty that makes sense to leave for signing with the enemy is the treaty of his surrender.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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