MOSCOW (RIA Novosti) –
Russia on Saturday officially withdrew from the Treaty on Open Skies after Washington’s European allies failed to give Moscow guarantees that information collected during observation flights over Russian territory would not be handed over to the U.S., according to local media.
The Russian foreign ministry’s announcement in a statement of the country’s official withdrawal from the Treaty on Open Skies comes nearly a year after it said it would quit the accord.
The Kremlin has said that the United States’ decision in 2020 to leave the treaty upset the balance of interests among the pact’s members and compelled Russia to exit.
“We respect the decision of the participating States remaining in the Treaty to continue its implementation. We wish them constructive and fruitful collaboration. However, it is obvious that without the participation of the United States and our country, the effectiveness of the Treaty on Open Skies will decrease sharply: the area of application will drop by about 80 percent, and the number of Open Skies missions planned for 2022 will severely decrease,” the statement read.
“Full responsibility for the degradation of the agreement lies at the feet of the initiator of the collapse of the Treaty on Open Skies: the United States of America,” the ministry stated.
The Treaty on Open Skies had allowed unarmed surveillance flights over three dozen signatories. Russia had called on the U.S. to return to the treaty. Instead, the U.S. accused Russia of violating the pact, which Moscow denied.
Moscow’s efforts to preserve the agreement proved for naught, falling victim “to the internal struggle of various influence groups in the United States, in which the hawks took over” and took a course toward the destruction of major security agreements with Russia, the ministry added.
During its participation in the treaty, Russia conducted 646 flights, and allowed for 449 flights to be carried out over its territory among the 1,580 total flights made. The country’s jets became the first to switch to digital surveillance equipment within the framework of the treaty.
“Decades of fruitful implementation of the Treaty on Open Skies showed that it served well as a tool for strengthening confidence and security, creating additional opportunities for an objective and unbiased assessment of the military potential and military activities of the participating States,” the ministry stressed.
The Treaty on Open Skies was negotiated, signed and ratified in 1992, and stepped into force in 2002, becoming one of numerous confidence-building measures between former Cold War adversaries after the collapse of the Soviet Union.