MOSCOW, May 16 (Xinhua) -- Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, has formally denounced the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), according to a statement published on its website Tuesday.
"Deputies of the State Duma, guided by the interests of our citizens, decided to denounce the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe to ensure the security of the Russian Federation," said Chairman of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin initially submitted a bill to the State Duma on the denunciation of the treaty on Wednesday.
The document submitted by the Russian leader stated that the treaty has currently become outdated and irrelevant, considering the large-scale global changes that have taken place, related to the expansion of NATO.
"Washington and Brussels, obsessed with the idea of building a unipolar world and expanding NATO to the east, have destroyed the global security system," Volodin wrote in a Telegram post.
He noted that while NATO had originally portrayed itself as a defensive alliance, it eventually only caused suffering and destruction through its interventions in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Syria.
By continuing its arms supplies to the Kiev regime, Washington is in fact destabilizing the situation in the world and "provoking a global catastrophe," he said.
The CFE treaty was originally signed in 1990 by the then-NATO members and former six Warsaw Treaty states. The agreement came into force later in 1992.
The treaty was aimed at establishing a balance between the two military alliances by setting limits on the quantities of weapons and military equipment that all parties were allowed to amass.
