Agence France-Presse,
Russian President Vladimir Putin called Thursday for a freeze on Russian compliance with the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty limiting military deployments across the continent.
“I propose we declare a moratorium on fulfillment by Russia of the CFE treaty,” Putin said in his annual state of the nation address.
Putin complained that Russia had both signed and ratified the landmark 1990 treaty between NATO and the former Warsaw Pact and was today doing its best to apply all the terms of the accord while the West had not even ratified the agreement.
“What about them? They didn't even ratify the adapted CFE,” Putin said.
The CFE treaty, signed in 1990 between NATO and the Warsaw Pact of Central and Eastern European Communist states, allowed the destruction of 60,000 tanks, vehicles, artillery pieces, planes and helicopters.
Under it, the number of armed forces was also reduced from 5.7 million troops to fewer than three million, and inspections and transparency were reinforced.
An adapted treaty, signed in 1999 in Istanbul, has been ratified by only four countries however, including Russia.
