Friday marked the 31st anniversary of the Budapest Memorandum - the landmark agreement, through which Ukraine relinquished the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom. France and China gave individual assurances in separate documents.
Signed on December 5, 1994, the document was intended to anchor Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Budapest Memorandum formalized security assurances from Washington, London, and Moscow, including commitments to respect Ukraine’s borders and refrain from the use or threat of force. The agreement was reaffirmed in a joint US-Russia statement in 2009, confirming that its security provisions would remain valid beyond the expiration of START.
As history proved, all this turned out to become one of the greatest broken promises of modern times. One of the signataries brutally violated it becoming the aggressor, while the others failed to take direct action when push came to shove - first in the face of Moscow's 2014 regional invasion ending up in occupation of Crimea and parts of Donbas and Luhansk, and then in 2022, when Russia started its illegal full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine.
When it regained independence in 1991, Ukraine inherited USSR's 1,900 nuclear warheads, 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles in hardened silos, 44 strategic bombers, and up to 4,000 tactical nuclear munitions. At the time, only the US and Russia possessed more nuclear weapons. As per the memorandum's agreements - Kyiv transferred the arsenal back to Russia by 1996. Ironically, some of the bombers returned to Moscow are now used by Putin's forces to kill Ukrainian civilians in airstrikes against Ukrainian cities.
Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha marked the 31st anniversary of the Budapest Memorandum by stating that his country will not accept "empty pledges" again in any possible peace settlement with Russia. He called the Budapest Memorandum "a piece of paper that has become synonymous with a failed security arrangement", adding that with such a bitter experience in the past, Ukraine does not trust empty promises anymore.
(mm)
Source: EuroMaidanPress, Kyiv Independent, United24Media