What was Warsaw Pact? Know all about it here amid Russia-Ukraine crisis

Representational Image (Reuters)

New Delhi: After weeks of warnings from Western leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday (February 24, 2022) launched the invasion of Ukraine, an attack that threatens to upend Europe's post-Cold War order.

Putin accused the West of ignoring Russia's security concerns and deliberately creating a scenario designed to lure it into war. He has described a potential future scenario in which Ukraine was admitted to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and then attempted to recapture the Crimea peninsula, a territory Russia had seized in 2014.

Russia has long resented NATO's granting of membership to countries that were once part of the Soviet Union or were in its sphere of influence as members of the Warsaw Pact.

Amid the Russia-Ukraine crisis, here's a look at what the Warsaw Pact exactly was.

The Warsaw Treaty Organization, also known as the Warsaw Pact, was a political and military alliance established in 1955 between the Soviet Union and various Eastern European countries. The Soviet Union had formed this alliance as a counterbalance to NATO, a collective security alliance concluded between the United States, Canada and Western European nations in 1949.

It was formally known as the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance and embodied what was referred to as the Eastern bloc, while NATO and its member countries represented the Western bloc.

The original signatories to the Warsaw Treaty Organization were the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and the German Democratic Republic. 

The Warsaw Pact and NATO were ideologically opposed and built up their own defences starting an arms race that lasted throughout the Cold War. By the 1980s, the Warsaw Treaty Organization was met with problems related to the economic slowdown in all Eastern European countries and by the late 1980s, political changes in most of the member states made the Pact virtually ineffectual. 

In September 1990, East Germany left the Pact in preparation for reunification with West Germany and a month later, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, also withdrew from all Warsaw Pact military exercises. It eventually was officially disbanded in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

(With agency inputs)