Russia's Pullout From Arms Treaty Is 'Disregard For International System,' State Dept Says

Washington D.C./10.11.23/Turan:    The United States said on Thursday that it believes Russia’s decision to withdraw from a landmark arms treaty early this week was "just the latest in a series of actions that the Kremlin has taken to systematically undermine Euro-Atlantic security," as a top State Department official overseeing arms control put it, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

Signed by 22 countries in 1990, the treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) set equal limits on the amount of weaponry, including tanks, heavy artillery and combat aircraft. that NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact could deploy between the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural mountains. Russia formally withdrew on November 7th, but had not actively participated since 2015.

"They have shown a contempt for the rules-based international order and a disregard for arms control in particular, including the key principles represented by the CFE of reciprocity, transparency, verification, and especially host nation consent," Mallory Stewart, assistant secretary of State from the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, told TURAN's Washington correspondent during a media call organized by the Brussels Media Hub.

"Our reading and interpretation of Russia’s recent actions – and especially their decision to fully and completely withdraw on November 7th – was just to re-emphasize their disregard for the international system that the rest of Europe has decided has kept us safe," Stewart said.

When asked by TURAN what this means for our broader relations, Stewart said, "none of this is helpful," and if Russia continues on this path to continue to try and withdraw, disregard, and undermine our international legal architecture, "it’s going to be extraordinarily harmful to have any ability to continue engaging with them." 

She went on to add, "We have to make sure that there’s no advantage received from Russia by their actions to disregard either this treaty or the numerous others."

In response to Moscow's actions, the U.S. and all other NATO Allied states parties to the CFE, also announced on Nov 7th their decision to suspend the operation of all of their CFE Treaty obligations consistent with our rights under international law. The U.S. suspension will take effect on Dec 7th.

"Given sort of the significance of the situation, in light of the fundamental change of circumstances, given that Russia is continuing its onslaught against Ukraine, we had to pick an appropriate notice period for our statement of suspension, and a month was deemed, I think, a good amount of time to allow notice for the activity and to give the treaty implementation entity at the OSCE and elsewhere a chance to get ahead of the fact that we’re collectively suspending the treaty," Stewart explained.

Alex Raufoglu