Kremlin tears up arms pact with Nato

Russia’s relations with West hit a new low point

Luke Harding in Moscow
Sunday July 15, 2007
The Observer

President Vladimir Putin yesterday signalled that Russia was on a new
and explosive collision course with Nato when he dumped a key arms
control treaty limiting the deployment of conventional forces in Europe.
Putin said Moscow was unilaterally withdrawing from the Soviet-era
Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty because of ‘extraordinary
circumstances that affect the security of the Russian Federation’, the
Kremlin said. These required ‘immediate measures’.

The treaty governs where Nato and Russia can station their troops in
Europe. Moscow’s decision to bin it suggests that Putin’s talks earlier
this month with President George Bush came to nothing, and that the
Kremlin has reverted to its earlier belligerent mood. The Kremlin has
for months been bitterly incensed by the Bush administration’s decision
to site elements of its missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech
Republic.

Putin has derided American claims that the Pentagon system is designed
to shoot down rogue missiles fired by Iran and North Korea. Instead he
says the target is Russia.
Last month he said the US could use a former Soviet radar system in
Azerbaijan instead. But during his seaside summit this month with Putin
at the Bush family’s Maine home, President Bush rejected this offer – a
snub that appears to have triggered Putin’s latest defiant gesture.

‘The detente lasted two weeks,’ Pavel Felgenhauer, a Moscow-based
defence analyst, told The Observer yesterday, referring to the
short-lived thaw.

Putin’s decision to leave the treaty will come into effect in 150 days
after the parties of the treaty have been notified. It comes against a
backdrop of rapidly deteriorating relations between Russia and the
West. In particular, Russia’s relations with Britain are at their
lowest point since the Seventies following Moscow’s refusal last week
to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, the former KGB agent charged with
poisoning Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London.

The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, is expected to announce punitive
counter-measures this week. They could see the mass expulsion of
diplomats from Russia’s embassy in London, and tit-for-tat reprisals by
Moscow.

In Brussels, Nato bluntly condemned Russia’s decision to abandon the
treaty, under which Nato and the Warsaw Pact agreed to reduce their
conventional armed forces immediately after the Cold War. ‘It’s a step
in the wrong direction,’ said spokesman James Appathurai. ‘The allies
consider this treaty to be an important cornerstone of European
stability.’ Estonia said it deplored the move.

The Kremlin insisted, however, it had been left little choice. Russia’s
Foreign Ministry called the treaty ‘hopelessly outdated’. It said
restrictions on Russian troop deployment were now ‘senseless’ and
prevented ‘more efficient measures against international terrorism’.

Under the treaty, signed by the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
in 1990, Russia agreed to scrap much of its military hardware in
Eastern Europe and limit the number of troops stationed on its northern
and southern flanks.

The treaty was amended in 1999, calling on Russia to withdraw its
troops from the former Soviet republics of Moldova and Georgia. Russia
ratified the treaty but did not pull out its troops, prompting the US
and other Nato members to refuse to ratify the treaty until Russia
withdraws.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov yesterday said Russia could no longer
tolerate a situation where it had ratified and its partners had not.
Yesterday analysts said that Putin’s move would probably not make much
difference to Russia’s military capacities, but it would allow Russian
generals to carry out exercises without informing their Western
counterparts and keep Russian troops in the breakaway regions of
Georgia and Moldova.

Moscow’s ferocious anti-Western rhetoric is set to continue ahead of
parliamentary elections in December and presidential elections next
year to choose Putin’s successor.

Some analysts, however, believe Moscow’s move is largely symbolic. The
moratorium probably wouldn’t result in any major build-up in heavy
weaponry in European Russia, Felgenhauer said. But it would annoy
Washington, he conceded. ‘This will be a major irritant. It will
seriously spoil relations.’