Washington freezes open sky treaty with moscow in new defense bill

In June 2017, the United States said Moscow was violating the terms of the Open Skies Treaty by placing restrictions on overflights of Kaliningrad, Russia's enclave on the Baltic Sea.

The United States said it would implement restrictions on Russian observation flights over the United States on January 1, 2018. The Russian Foreign Ministry has said it has complied with 

its obligations under all international agreements including the Open Skies Treaty The Treaty on Open Skies was signed in 1992 and became one of the measures to build confidence in post-Cold

War Europe. It has been operating since 2002 and allows participating countries to openly collect information on each other's military forces and activities. The treaty covers most

NATO member states as well as Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sweden and Finland. As a rule, flights of Russia and NATO member states are conducted on a reciprocal

basis. US EXTENDS BAN ON BILATERAL MILITARY COOPERATION WITH RUSSIA The NDAA also revealed that the US government extended its ban against cooperating militarily with Russia in a bilateral

format. The prohibition remained in effect this year and with the law signed by Trump continues the ban through 2019. The prohibition, first enacted in the 2017 NDAA, says none of the funds

authorized may be used for any bilateral military-to-military cooperation with Russia until Moscow implements the Minsk accords and returns Crimea to Ukrainian sovereignty.