January 21st local time, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Zakharova said that the United States and its allies are fully responsible for the collapse of the Open Skies Treaty.
Zaharova said that the withdrawal of the United States from the treaty fundamentally changed the conditions accepted by all parties when the treaty was formed, and the balance of interests among the signatories to the treaty was broken.
Zaharova pointed out that the United States’ accession to the Open Skies Treaty was the most important condition for the
Russian Parliament to ratify accession to the Treaty in 2001, and Russia has made every effort to save the Treaty.
On January 19th local time, Shamanov, chairman of the National Defense Committee of the Russian State Duma (Lower House of Parliament)
Announced that whether to formally withdraw from the Open Sky Treaty depends on the dialogue between Russia and the new government of the United States.
It will take one to three months for Russia to make a final decision.
The Open Skies Treaty was signed in 1992 and became one of the initiatives to build strategic security confidence in Europe after the Cold War. The treaty has been implemented since 2002, allowing participating countries to disclose and collect information about military forces and activities from each other.
U.S. President Trump announced in May 2020 that the United States had initiated the withdrawal process from the Open Skies Treaty on the grounds that Russia violated the Treaty.
Russia has repeatedly refuted the U.S. breach of contract. On November 22, 2020, the U.S. government announced that the United States officially withdrew from the Open Sky Treaty.
