Russia terminates military agreements with Portugal, France and Canada

Russia terminated decades-old military cooperation agreements with Portugal, France and Canada by decree published on Friday, according to Russian state media.

The three agreements signed between 1989 and 2000 are no longer strategically relevant, Russian authorities said.

The agreements were signed during a period of improved relations between Russia and the West following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Canada agreement came just weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 — which effectively signalled the end of the Cold War — when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to mend bridges with Western nations.

The 1994 France agreement followed Russian President Boris Yeltsin's broader push to integrate Russia into European security structures.

Yeltsin had initially hoped Russia could join NATO or develop a special partnership with the alliance, signing treaties with France committing both countries to consult during crises and build "a network of peace and solidarity" in Europe.

The 2000 Portugal agreement came during what researchers describe as the most fruitful period for Russia-Portugal relations in the 1990s and 2000s, when high-level visits were frequent despite Portugal's NATO membership.

Since then, the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin have shown an increasingly hostile posture towards NATO and the West, claiming it is intentionally encroaching closer to Russia and partly blaming it for Moscow's all-out war in Ukraine without providing evidence.

Russia's resistance to Ukraine's potential NATO membership was one of the key demands in the leaked 28-point US-Russian deal to end the war, which Kyiv and analysts alike have said leaves the door open for another invasion of Ukraine in the future.

The decision on Friday follows a similar move in July, when Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin cancelled a 1996 military-technical cooperation agreement with Germany. The Foreign Ministry accused Berlin of pursuing an "openly hostile policy" and "increasingly aggressive militaristic aspirations".

Portugal and France both support European Commission proposals to use frozen Russian assets to provide loans to Ukraine. Around €210 billion in Russian state assets are frozen in the European Union, with most held at Euroclear in Belgium.

The EU has been debating how to use these immobilised funds to help Ukraine, which faces a budget shortfall of around $65 billion over the next two years, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Ukraine has depended on financial and military support from Western allies since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.