The Kremlin said today that a gap” emerges in the field of equipment control as a result of bad relations between some states and said that Russia is not responsible for this situation.

The representative of the Kremlin Dmitry Peskov was responding to a question about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to formally “terminate” an arms control treaty signed after the end of the Cold War.

“… in this area of ​​arms control, strategic stability, a big gap now arises, of course, which ideally will be urgently filled by new enactments of international law to regulate this situation,” Peskov said in regular press conference.

“This is in everyone’s interest. But for that to happen, we need bilateral relations that work with a whole range of states that currently don’t exist,” he said, adding that it was not “our responsibility.”

THE Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) of 1990 set limits on the development of military equipment in Europe. Russia suspended its membership of the treaty in 2007 and “completely terminated” its membership in 2015.

Putin signed a decree this month symbolically denouncing the treaty after a debate and vote in the Russian parliament on the matter.

Russia recently suspended its participation in some arms control agreements with Western states, including the New START treaty, which regulates nuclear proliferation, and has begun regularly moving nuclear weapons to neighboring Belarus.

Relations between Moscow and Western countries have fallen to their lowest level since the Cold War after Putin sent tens of thousands of Russian troops to Ukraine on February 24, 2022 in what he calls a “special military operation” to protect Russia’s security against to the pro-Western authorities in Kiev.

Ukraine and its Western allies say Russia’s actions constitute an unprovoked war of aggression to seize territory.