Enough Nonsense. There Is Only One Solution for Ukraine.
Russia must honor the terms of the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, signed between Russia and Ukraine in 1994 by Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian Federation, and President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine.
The Budapest Memorandum demands Ukraine’s sovereignty, not its dismemberment like a pig at killing time.
Who were the other signatories?
President Bill Clinton of the U.S. and Prime Minister John Major of the UK also signed, and the reason we are in such a snit today is because the memorandum provided security assurances, not security guarantees. Clinton and Major politically committed their countries to certain principles, but did not create a binding obligation to defend Ukraine militarily. And there you have it, political principles by the unprincipled.
And what, pray tell, was at stake?
Quite a lot, actually.
Ukraine surrendered the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for promises that turned out to be politically sincere, legally weak, and strategically unenforceable. That’s what some say, but I am not among them. In my mind they were never politically sincere, as sincerity in Russia is an oxymoron. As for ‘assurances’ by Clinton and Major, history paints them with the same brush.
Yeltsin-era Russia formally recognized Ukraine’s borders and many Ukrainian leaders believed Post–Cold War Europe had moved past territorial conquest, and written commitments from major powers would matter.
What matters, is that agreements are quite laughably made in good faith among the faithless.
Along with political “assurances” from Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom that Ukraine’s sovereignty and borders would be respected, Russia asserts that Western leaders gave parallel verbal assurances that NATO would not expand eastward. These commitments were never codified in treaty language and are explicitly denied as binding by the United States and its allies.
I don’t doubt they were made. One doesn’t ‘explicitly deny as binding’ an agreement that was never offered.
A classic jump-ball in a very close game, with plenty of fouls on both sides and damn poor officiating.
Ukraine thus disarmed in a landscape of informal promises on all sides. Its own security rested on unenforceable assurances, while Russia’s claimed expectations about NATO rested on undocumented understandings. Sounds to me like the next step would logically be the hiring of divorce lawyers, but Vladimir Putin struck first.
In February of 2014, Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, fled the country after months of mass protests (the Maidan uprising) against corruption and his rejection of closer ties with the European Union. A new, Western-leaning interim government took power in Kyiv.
Moscow viewed this as a Western-backed coup, and strategic threat to Russian influence, including a potential step toward NATO alignment. They likely had pretty good reason, as the whole thing had quite a pungent CIA odor over those months of protest.
The seizure of Crimea.
Within days, Russian troops without insignia (later admitted by Vladimir Putin to be Russian forces) took control of airports, government buildings, and military bases in Crimea.
Ukraine was not formally at war with Russia. Powerful actors like Russia, the US, and China no longer go to war. It’s become unfashionable, so we do police actions and such. Anyway, Russia denied involvement while controlling events on the ground, and in March of 2014, Russia staged a referendum under military occupation and annexed Crimea.
This was the first forcible annexation of European territory since WWII, and a direct violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, the UN Charter, and the Budapest Memorandum
The war in eastern Ukraine (Donbas).
Who would possibly have expected that soon after Crimea, armed uprisings appeared in Donetsk and Luhansk. Russia’s role included supplying weapons, sending intelligence officers and troops, and coordinating separatist leadership, just as Hitler had done in Czechoslovakia in 1939. No Europeans peeked out from under the covers, hoping for a Chamberlain-style Peace in Our Time.
Winston Churchill wasn’t around at the time to remind Europeans that ‘You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”
And war is what Ukraine got, but the choice was not theirs.
It still is not theirs.
Europe and the United States are (apparently) willing to let this incredibly brave nation swing in the wind until its last mother and child have been defeated. Because to do otherwise would require moral and military bravery, and Ukraine has evidently used up the entire current supply in Europe and America.
Appeasement has never worked against an aggressor, they always come for a second helping.
It need not be.
It must not be.