Russia announced Wednesday it would stop its participation in the Joint Consultative Group and in particular of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.

The agreement was signed back in 1990 among the members of the 16 NATO state members and the six Warsaw Pact countries. The document outlined the limits to military forces in Europe, as a means to prevent another international war and included specifications on the number of soldiers, tanks, artillery pieces and other non-nuclear weapons.

Head of the Russian delegation to Vienna on arms control talks, Aleksandr Mazur was quoted as saying that the country will suspend its participation in the advisory group.

The statement was posted on Russia's Foreign Ministry official website.

''Regrettably, NATO countries have preferred to dodge CFE provisions by means of the alliance’s expansion and use any pretexts to prevent the Agreement on Adapted CFE Treaty from coming into effect,'' Mazur said. ''This course pursued despite our repeated warning about its harmful impacts on the regime of control over conventional weapons led to the unavoidable result — Russia’s suspending the CFE Treaty in 2007.”

He, however, noted that Russia will be open to negotiations on amendments of the document.

The statement was made days after the public proposal of EU Commission's President Jean-Claude Juncker for the establishment of a European army, in the light of the armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine. 

Meanwhile, Russia and North Korea announced Wednesday that the year 2015 will be ''a year of bilateral friendship'' thus marking the 70th anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japan and ''the victory of the great patriotic war in Russia''.

The cooperation is said to be directed mainly in political, economic and cultural aspects, reported by The Telegraph.

The agreement will be supported by large Russian economic investment of USD 25 M in North Korea's railway system and a cancellation of USD 10 B out of the USD 11 B Korean government debt to Russia. 

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