The effectiveness of the Open Skies Treaty will dramatically decrease, as the zone of its application will shrink by about 80% now that Russia and the US left the deal, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th December, 2021) The effectiveness of the Open Skies Treaty will dramatically decrease, as the zone of its application will shrink by about 80% now that Russia and the US left the deal, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
Earlier in the day, Russia withdrew from the treaty designed as an instrument to strengthen the global trust and security after the US decided to quit the deal in November 2020.
"We respect the choice of the countries remaining in the (Open Skies) Treaty to continue its implementation. We wish them a constructive and fruitful joint work. But it is already evident that without the participation of the US and our country, the effectiveness of the treaty will drastically decrease; the zone of its application will shrink approximately by 80%, and the number of open skies missions planned for 2022 will decline dramatically," the ministry said in a statement.
The foreign ministry added the responsibility for ruining the treaty lies with the initiator of the withdrawal, the United States.
The ministry said that the decision on joining the treaty back in 1992 was not made easily.
"However, we decided to do it for the sake of strengthening of the international security. One of the telling arguments was participation of the US in the deal, who spoke for transparency in the military field, but was not rushing to open its territory to use trust measures. Decades of fruitful functioning of the treaty proved that it served as a good tool of trust and safety strengthening, created additional opportunities for an objective and unbiased assessment of the military potential and activities of member countries," the ministry said.
After the US withdrawal from the treaty, Moscow said that the agreement stopped being useful, as there was no guarantee that the US allies staying in the deal would not share the details of observation flights with the US.
