The Budapest Memorandum as it Relates to the Current Ukrainian Conflict
Agreement from 1994 between Russia, UK, US and Ukraine, and its relevance today
I recently wrote an article on the current state of the Ukrainian conflict, that offered a much different picture than what is being pushed by the US media. I posted this article on multiple social media sites and I had two responses to my argument that referenced the Budapest Memorandum. The argument was that we are obligated to provide military assistance to Ukraine, based on this agreement. This is the continuation of my previous article:
I will take a closer look at this, and we will try and see if this argument holds up. This was an agreement involving 4 countries, Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the USA. The year was 1994, shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Ukraine, with its new found sovereignty inherited 1900 strategic nuclear warheads. The Budapest Memorandum was an attempt to encourage Ukraine to dispose of this nuclear arsenal. The idea was to give Ukraine the impression that its sovereignty would be protected if they were ever attacked. The agreement was vaguely written and as a result, it was left largely up to interpretation.
The memorandum stated the intent to 1) ”Respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine”. 2) “Refrain from the threat or use of force against the country”. This agreement never mentions anything about weapons or military intervention on behalf of Ukraine, hence the ambiguity that I mentioned above. The purpose here was to sweet talk Ukraine into giving up their nuclear weapons. Was this coercion necessary to achieve this end? The answer is no. At the time of the Budapest Memorandum (1994), there was already an agreement in place to dispose of these weapons with Belarus and Kazakhstan, via the 1991 START Treaty negotiated by President Reagan and Premier Gorbachev.
The assertion that this agreement bounds us to military intervention against Russia to protect Ukraine in the current conflict, seems to be unfounded. At best one could suggest this based on an interpretation of the written agreement. The military intervention aspect of all of this though is not found in the written agreement so there is no binding implication that the Military is an obligation with the current state of affairs. This is not a good argument to justify our involvement. If it was, every media outlet would be all over this. Putin’s statements about Ukraine not being an independent country, is refuted by a former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, that publicly recognized Ukraine as its own nation. But, as I stated in my last article, Ukraine is corrupt to the core right now and is involved with biolabs and gain of function research that has seen so much scrutiny as of late. The government of Ukraine has been dropping bombs on their own civilians for years, and the neo-Nazi presence in the military is no longer a secret as the Azov Battalion has received quite a bit of scrutiny recently.
With the lack of specificity in the Budapest Memorandum, and the fact that much of it was implied, rather than written in black and white, Putin has found a way exploit this ambiguity to serve him and his own ambitions. From the agreement, “That none of their [UK, US, Russia]” weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense” gives Putin the opportunity to argue that his military action was justified under Article 51 of the UN Charter as he makes his case for self-defense.
I felt obligated to clear this up and cover this relevant subject as it is directly related to my previous article. I hope that this was informative for those that are naturally inquisitive and always in search of truth. I encourage everyone to dig deeper, do research own your own, and don’t take anyone else’s word for anything. Discover for yourself. I hope that this acts as a starting point for you to continue gathering information on this subject. There is no knowledge that is not power.
We should have learned by now that we should never sign treaties with Russia or China because it is quite obvious that the U.S. is the only one that will abide by them.