Members of Russia’s State Duma voted at a plenary meeting to denounce the agreement with the United States on the disposition of military-grade plutonium which is no longer used for defense purposes, TASS reports.

Apart from the intergovernmental agreement reached between Moscow and Washington in 2000 and ratified in 2011, the bill submitted by the Cabinet proposes that all protocols associated with it be denounced, too.

It provided for the destruction of 34 tons of military-grade plutonium declared surplus to military programs by each side.

In addition to the agreement, the proposal calls for the termination of all accompanying protocols. These documents regulate matters related to funding and civil liability for damages, as well as stipulate the arrangements for processing the plutonium covered by the agreement through irradiation in nuclear reactors.

According to the explanatory note, the agreement and its protocols had already been suspended by a Russian presidential decree and a separate federal law due to US sanctions, the adoption of US legislation on support for Ukraine, NATO’s eastward expansion, and the increased US military presence in Eastern European countries. Another reason for this suspension was the US intention to change the method of plutonium processing without Russia’s consent.

The Russian law stipulated that the plutonium covered by this agreement would remain outside of Russia’s nuclear programs and that the agreement itself would be reinstated once the US fulfilled Russia’s conditions, including lifting sanctions, repealing the law on support for Ukraine, compensating for Russia’s damages, and reducing NATO’s military infrastructure in countries that had joined the bloc after September 1, 2000.

The accompanying materials read that the US side did not fulfill a single condition under the document. Moreover, the US has taken more anti-Russian steps "that radically change the strategic balance that existed when the agreement was signed and pose additional threats to strategic security."

In this context, it is proposed to terminate the agreement and its accompanying protocols definitively.