11.03.2022, Moscow.
More than once, Russia has been accused of violating the Budapest Memorandum signed in 1994, according to which Russia, the US and the UK had supposedly agreed to ensure the security of Ukraine.
One could say that the devil is in details, but even a limited inquiry into this agreement shows its diplomatic failure.
Most importantly, this memorandum has not yet been ratified, that is, it has not been approved in the parliaments of the participating countries. Even in Ukraine. Which actually deprives it of a legal status and makes it an “intention” or a “reminder” document.
Secondly, the West had initiated the process of nuclear disarmament, not Yeltsin’s Russia. Ukraine’s nuclear missiles with a 5,000-10,000 kilometers range were frightening to the US. Therefore, with or without the memorandum, the nuclear disarmament of Kiev would have taken place.
Thirdly, the document clearly stipulates when comes the time to ensure the security of Ukraine: “… if Ukraine becomes a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.” Did someone use nuclear weapons against Kiev? No.
Fourth, even if we imagine that the document has any legal status, the coup d’état that took place in 2014 casts a serious doubt on the negotiability of Ukraine’s treaties.
Even if you look at the language map of Ukraine before 2014, you can see that it consisted of four different macro-regions: the Russian-speaking Crimea; the predominantly Russian-speaking South-East; evenly mixed Central Ukraine; and Ukrainian-speaking Western Ukraine. Each of these macro-regions is inhabited by people with different mentality, different values and heroes.
The 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine violated the consent between these four regions by putting Bandera-inspired Western Ukraine [Stepan Bandera was an antisemite and Nazi collaborator during the WWII] at the helm of the country. Central Ukraine was not much disturbed by it, but the Russian-speaking Crimea and the South-East began to resist the Westerners. Unfortunately, in Kharkov, Odessa and other cities of the South-East, local and visiting neo-Nazi groups suppressed the will of the people in a bloody way. And the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk became the hotbed of resistance to Bandera ideology.
What do we currently have? The Budapest Memorandum is an unnecessary, unratified, irrelevant document signed, in fact, with the state that was overthrown. And, its fair place is in the textbooks on diplomacy as an example of a failed treaty.
Translated from https://t.me/asamtokakdumaesh/1166
