On March 31, 1991, the military structures of the Warsaw Pact Organization were disbanded.

This decision was made at an extraordinary meeting of the Political Advisory Committee (PAC) of the bloc in February of the same year.

Let us recall that the Warsaw Pact Organization was formed on the basis of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance.

It was signed in May 1955 by the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania.

The document assumed that the parties would provide assistance to the country - a party to the treaty, if it was attacked.

In addition to the PKK, which coordinated the foreign policy activities of the parties to the treaty, the Joint Command of the Armed Forces, as well as auxiliary bodies, were established within the bloc.

After the creation of the Warsaw Pact Organization, its participants on a regular basis conducted joint command-staff and military exercises.

In addition, the Soviet leadership received the right to the presence of its troops in Eastern and Central Europe.

Thus, the Soviet Union strengthened its geopolitical position.

At the same time, other parties to the treaty also received considerable benefit: the USSR was engaged in the development and supply of advanced weapons for its allies, taking over most of the activities within the framework of the ATS.

As Vladimir Vinokurov, professor of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, vice-president of the League of Military Diplomats, noted in an interview with RT, the need to create a Warsaw Pact Organization was due, among other things, to the increased danger of unleashing a new world war in Europe and the emergence of a threat to the security of socialist countries.

"The ATS was created as a response to the formation in 1949 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a reaction to the so-called Paris agreements of 1954, according to which the Federal Republic of Germany entered NATO, which then became an extremely powerful irritant for the countries of the socialist community," Vinokurov said.

The head of the Bureau of Military-Political Analysis, Alexander Mikhailov, said, in turn, that the Internal Affairs Directorate "has become the second pole of power in the world."

“The Warsaw Pact Organization was centered around the Soviet Union in response to the declared goals of the North Atlantic Alliance, including the defeat of world communism.

The OVD balanced the capabilities of NATO, was a counterbalance to this military bloc, "the analyst explained in a comment to RT.

According to Mikhailov, an important feature of the Warsaw Pact was that it "was purely defensive in nature, pursuing the goal of ensuring peace and security in Europe."

“In this, its tasks were fundamentally different from those that faced NATO,” he said.

  • Joint exercises of the troops of the member countries of the Warsaw Pact

  • RIA News

As Vinokurov said, after entering the Internal Affairs Directorate, all the countries of this bloc "received collective security forces from aggression in all its forms."

“They also gained a guarantee of the inviolability of those borders that were established as a result of the Second World War,” the expert recalled.

Mikhailov, for his part, added that the USSR helped the countries of the Warsaw Pact not only with weapons.

“The assistance was expressed both in money and in the supply of products, transfer of technology, including engineering and military.

The Soviet Union provided comprehensive economic support to its allies, ”the analyst said.

Prerequisites for destruction

It is worth noting that a series of historical events that began in the 1950s led to the dissolution of the military structures of the Warsaw Pact Organization and its abolition.

Despite the fact that the ATS was created in opposition to the North Atlantic Alliance, a year after its formation, the Hungarian government announced that it had a neutral position both to the East and to the West, and therefore wanted to withdraw from the agreement concluded in 1955.

Protest demonstrations were also taking place in the country at that time.

At the end of October 1956, the Soviet leadership brought tanks into Budapest to fight the insurgents.

As a result, Hungary then remained in the ATS.

In 1956, there were also popular unrest in Poland, but the Soviet leadership managed to normalize the situation peacefully.

However, in 1968, in order to maintain a balance of power between the Warsaw bloc and NATO, the USSR authorities had to send troops of the ATS members (with the exception of Romania) to Czechoslovakia in order to suppress unrest in the country and prevent the liberalization of the existing regime.

Soviet troops from Romania were withdrawn back in 1958 by mutual agreement.

Albania unilaterally denounced the Warsaw Pact in September 1968.

"The dissolution of the military structures of the Warsaw Pact Organization was caused not by the result of military defeat, but by internal conflicts, the foreign policy of the leadership of the Soviet Union in the" perestroika "time, as well as by the state of the Soviet economy, which has been supporting the socialist countries and the entire Soviet multimillion-dollar army for many years," information and reference materials of the Historical and Documentary Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.

It is also noted that in the 1980s, the Soviet leadership "began to consider the Department of Internal Affairs as a relic of the Cold War and an unnecessary burden."

“Despite the fact that on April 26, 1985 the Warsaw Pact was extended for 20 years with the possibility of subsequent prolongation for another 10 years, in October 1985 M.S.

Gorbachev proposed to reduce the armed forces of NATO and the Warsaw Pact in Europe, promising that the USSR will destroy significantly more weapons than the United States, ”the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

  • Signing in May 1955 of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Romania, USSR, Czechoslovakia at the Warsaw Meeting of European States on Peace and Security in Europe.

  • © RIA News

During a summit meeting of the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States in December 1989, US President George W. Bush promised Mikhail Gorbachev that the abolition of the Warsaw Pact would not be followed by a change in the balance of power in Europe and the accession of independent countries of the region to NATO.

As Alexander Mikhailov noted, the USSR eventually began to limit military aid to the Warsaw Pact countries.

“In addition, the Soviet Union began to destroy its weapons, the latest developments in the Air Force, space, radar warfare and in a number of other areas,” the analyst said.

Implications for the world

However, as experts note, after the collapse of the ATS, the promises of the collective West not to expand NATO were not fulfilled.

At the end of February 1991, at an extraordinary and last meeting of the PAC in Budapest, it was unanimously decided to abolish the military organs and structures of the Warsaw Pact Organization by March 31 of the same year.

In early July, in Prague, the parties to the ATS signed a final document - a protocol on the complete termination of the 1955 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance.

"The liquidation of the Internal Affairs Directorate deprived the Soviet Union of strategic allies in Europe and weakened its influence in Europe and the world as a whole, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe meant the provision of strategic space at the disposal of other powers," Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.

It is also reported that the withdrawal of a powerful Soviet group "was more like a hasty flight: property was abandoned, people and equipment were housed in an almost open field in winter, without prepared barracks for soldiers and housing for officers and their families."

Eight years after the closure of the ATS, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic were the first of the former Warsaw Pact countries to join NATO.

Five years later, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, as well as the three Baltic republics - Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - became part of the alliance.

"Thus, the NATO bloc not only did not cease to exist, but in violation of all previously reached agreements on not moving to the East, included a number of former Soviet republics in its composition," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

After the abolition of the military structures of the Warsaw Pact Organization, the North Atlantic Alliance began to surpass the Soviet Union in the number of tanks and artillery by 1.5 times, in aircraft and helicopters by 1.3 times.

“In fact, the United States and its allies turned out to be the only force claiming to dominate world affairs ... They unleashed a series of wars and conflicts around the world, which destabilized the international political system and caused the threat of a new world war in the form of a series of local and regional wars that merge into a general global chaos, ”the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

It is also noted that the NATO military took part in wars, including in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan.

As Vladimir Vinokurov stated, "the collective West deceived the USSR when it promised not to expand NATO to the East."

“Despite the fact that a fundamental act on mutual relations, cooperation and security between Russia and NATO was signed in Paris in 1997, and despite the oral agreements reached during negotiations with Western partners on the issue of German reunification, the alliance did not fulfill its promises and subsequently began to spread influence over the countries of Eastern Europe, ”he said.

  • Soldiers take part in Saber Strike 2014 exercise on Media Day in Rukla, Lithuania.

    Saber Strike 2014 was simultaneously carried out in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, about 4,700 troops from 10 NATO member countries were involved in the maneuvers

  • globallookpress.com

  • © Alfredas Pliadis

According to Alexander Mikhailov, after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the USSR "lost all the geopolitical gains that the OVD achieved during its existence."

“Including a large network of countries loyal to the Soviet Union.

And now Russia is forced to restore the axis of friendly states within the framework of multilateral cooperation, ”the expert said.

In addition, Russia took part in the formation of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in order to create conditions for military-technical cooperation with the countries of the former USSR, Mikhailov recalled.

“However, the CSTO is not comparable to NATO in terms of scope and objectives.

The organization does not seek to impose its ideology on other countries, unlike the North Atlantic Alliance, which wants to unite its allies with an invented common enemy in the person of the Russian Federation, ”the analyst said.

However, Russia "in itself acts as a separate pole of military power in the world with its modernized military-industrial complex."

“The controllability of the Russian contingents is at an extremely high level, which is demonstrated by military exercises with the participation of the Russian Federation.

The Russian army is not divided into component parts, as in the EU, nor does it depend on military-political blocs, such as, for example, NATO member countries, "the expert explained.

Mikhailov summed up that, despite the collapse of the Warsaw Pact Organization, this military-political bloc "fulfilled its main goal during its existence" - there was no nuclear war on the planet during the period of the Warsaw Pact.

“It's another matter how the NATO commanders dealt with the legacy of the collapse of the USSR - instead of dissolving the bloc due to the disappearance of the second pole of power, they, on the contrary, began to strengthen their infrastructure, absorbing those states that had left the Warsaw Pact.

Thus, they modeled the difficult situation in which we now live: in fact, the renewed arms race and the destabilization of world security.

In addition, now there are not two poles of military power in the world, but three - China has been added to the Russian Federation and the United States, ”the analyst concluded.