Moscow-The Senate of the Russian Parliament voted on Wednesday to withdraw from an international treaty that allows surveillance flights of military installations after the United States withdraws from the treaty.
U.S. officials said last month that former President Donald Trump decided not to rejoin the Open Sky Treaty, which allowed Joe Biden’s administration to monitor and fly military installations, before withdrawing from the deal. Was done after telling Moscow.
As a presidential candidate, Biden criticized Trump’s withdrawal as “short-sighted.” Moscow has indicated that if the United States returns to an agreement, it will cancel the withdrawal process and be ready to stay in the 1992 treaty.
After the Russian Senate voted to withdraw from the treaty, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will be asked to sign. If Putin supports the withdrawal, it will come into effect within six months.
“There will soon be a government order condemning Russia’s memorandum of understanding on the public land,” TASS said, citing Russia’s Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Sergei Ryabkov.
Putin and Biden are set to hold a summit meeting in Geneva on June 16. After Russia merged Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, Russia-US relations sank to the lowest level since the Cold War era. There are elections, and alleged hacking attacks.
The Treaty on Open Skies builds trust between Russia and the West by allowing more than 30 signatories to conduct reconnaissance flights on each other’s territories to gather information on military power and activities. It was intended to be built. Since its entry into force in 2002, more than 1,500 flights have been made under this treaty with the aim of promoting transparency and enabling arms control and other agreement monitoring.
Last year, Mr. Trump withdrew from the deal, claiming that Russia’s breach made Washington unacceptable to maintain the party. Washington completed its withdrawal from the treaty in November.
Moscow lamented the withdrawal of the United States and warned that it would erode world security by making it more difficult for governments to interpret the intentions of other nations, especially as tensions between Russia and the West increase.
The European Union urges the United States to reconsider its withdrawal and urges Russia to maintain the agreement and lift flight restrictions, especially in the westernmost part of the Kaliningrad region between NATO allies Lithuania and Poland. I asked you to do it.
Russia argued that past restrictions on observation flights were permissible under the treaty, noting that the United States had imposed even more stringent restrictions on observation flights over Alaska.
As a condition to maintain the agreement after the withdrawal of the United States, Moscow asked NATO allies to guarantee that the data collected during the observation flight over Russia would not be handed over to the United States, but failed.
Vladimir Isachenkov
Epoch Times contributed to this report.