Russia officially exits European arms control treaty

MOSCOW - Russia has formally withdrawn from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) at midnight Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced on its website Tuesday.

"As of 00:00 hours on November 7, 2023, the CFE withdrawal procedure for Russia, which was suspended by our country in 2007, has been completed. Thus, the international legal document has finally gone into history for us," it said.

Russia does not currently see the possibility of concluding arms control agreements with NATO countries, it added.

Two other agreements related to the CFE had ceased to be valid for Russia -- the Budapest Memorandum of November 3, 1990, which set the maximum levels of conventional weapons and equipment for the six Warsaw Pact countries, and the Flank Agreement of May 31, 1996, which modified the original treaty.

The CFE, originally signed in 1990 by the then NATO members and the then six Warsaw Treaty states, came into force in 1992.

The pact was aimed at establishing a balance between the two military alliances by setting limits on the quantities of weapons and military equipment that all parties were allowed to amass.