Russia has officially left a landmark strategic agreement that allowed surveillance flights over its territory. Moscow said the US wrecked the post-Cold War confidence boosting Treaty on Open Skies by abandoning it last year.
The White House has said that it believes the US government managed to largely defend against the latest massive cyberattack on federal agencies, think tanks.
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Tupolev Tu-134AK. Photo: Dmitry Terekhov flickr.com
In mid-January, Russian authorities declared their
intention to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty. This agreement allows parties
to observe other participating actors’ territory from the air as a
confidence-building measure. Earlier, in November 2020, numerous violations of
this treaty by Russia pushed the United States to withdraw from the agreement. As
a result, Moscow, which had continuously challenged the extent of the treaty’s power,
immediately announced its own withdrawal.
In recent years, Russia has increasingly violated major international treaties related to arms control. This began with the Kremlin’s unjustified decision to suspend its participation in the Treaty on Conventional Arms in Europe in 2015, which marked Russia’s growing desire to pursue hybrid warfare across the continent. This was soon followed by the INF Treaty, perhaps the most important international deal of the late 1980s. The agreement