After the U.S. withdrawal from the Treaty on Military Observation Flights (the Open Skies Treaty), Russia is now also leaving the agreement.
Washington did not respond to Moscow’s proposals to preserve the treaty, so Russia is now starting the withdrawal process, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday.
The U.S. left the treaty on trumped-up charges, the Russian Foreign Ministry added.
On November 22, 2020, the United States announced its official withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty. Washington cited Moscow’s treaty violations as the reason for the move. Russia, however, repeatedly denied the accusation.
The treaty was concluded between 34 countries in 1992 and came into force in 2002. It allows the signatory states to carry out a certain number of agreed observation flights over the territory of other states each year. It has been considered an important confidence-building practice since the end of the Cold War.
Since moving into the White House, Donald Trump has pulled the country out of many international agreements, including the Open Skies Treaty, the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord. As a pretext, he said these were to the detriment of the United States or were incomplete or at odds with U.S. security interests.