Lavrov Sees As Striking NATO, EU Reaction To Russia's Withdrawal From Open Skies Treaty

Lavrov Sees as Striking NATO, EU Reaction to Russia's Withdrawal From Open Skies Treaty

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed the belief that NATO and EU reaction to Russia's withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty was striking, as the United States was actually the first to leave the surveillance flights deal

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th June, 2021) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed the belief that NATO and EU reaction to Russia's withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty was striking, as the United States was actually the first to leave the surveillance flights deal.

"For nearly 30 years, the Open Skies Treaty helped all parties to better understand each other's intentions in the military sphere. In this regard, the US unilateral withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty under far-fetched pretexts grossly upset the balance of interests and put our country in an unequal position from the point of view of military transparency. In these circumstances, Moscow's further participation in the treaty completely lost its meaning ... The reaction to our absolutely natural step from NATO and the European Union, which hypocritically called on Moscow not to destroy the treaty, is just striking, as if they forgot about Washington's irrevocable decision to withdraw from it, which was actually the root cause of the current crisis," Lavrov said at the Moscow Conference on International Security.