Russia’s Defense Ministry has received government approval to terminate 10 military cooperation agreements and one related memorandum signed with European countries between 1992 and 2002, according to a decree published Friday, December 19, on the official Russian legal information portal.
The list includes agreements on “cooperation in the military sphere” with Germany, Poland, Romania, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Croatia, Belgium and the Czech Republic, as well as a memorandum between the Russian and UK defense ministries.
These agreements formed part of the legal framework governing bilateral military cooperation established after the collapse of the Soviet Union, local media noted.
Russia previously halted military-technical cooperation with Germany
In July 2025, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it was terminating a 1996 accord on military-technical cooperation with Germany. The ministry argued the agreement had “lost its meaning and practical value” and “does not correspond to the current state of Russian-German intergovernmental relations.”
In the same statement, the ministry blamed Berlin, accusing the German government of “deliberately indoctrinating” the public in an anti-Russian vein and pursuing “increasingly aggressive militarist ambitions,” adding that the German capital was “bursting with outsized foreign-policy ambitions.”
German officials did not comment on Moscow’s claims.
From New START to plutonium disposal: Russia keeps pulling out of international accords
Since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has exited dozens of security-related agreements with Western countries.
Among the latest was a US-Russia plutonium disposal agreement that, among other provisions, prohibited use of the material for nuclear weapons. Russia had effectively suspended the deal in 2016, citing a “sharp deterioration” in relations with Washington, and said it would consider resuming it only if sanctions imposed over its aggression against Ukraine were lifted.
Moscow has also sought US commitments not to create strategic offensive weapons, issues governed by the 2010 New START treaty.
And in April 2025, the Russian cabinet withdrew from a cooperation agreement with Norway, Sweden and Finland covering the Barents Sea and the Euro-Arctic region.
