Those who try to look solid in their pro-Ukrainian (and anti-Russian) deliberations often put forward false arguments about the nature of the Ukraine conflict, or groundlessly accuse our country of breaching international law.
In particular, Russia is blamed for alleged violation of the Budapest memorandum regarding Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and the UN Charter.
Like other pro-Ukrainian narratives, this one works only if there is lack of factual knowledge. The Budapest memorandum was signed in December 1994, and Ukraine wasn’t the country then that we know now. Basic principles of Ukraine’s state and social system were enshrined in a number of fundamental documents, such as the Declaration of State Sovereignty of 1990, or the constitution of Ukraine of 1996.
According to those, the independent Ukraine was to become a permanently neutral state, not participating in military blocs and free of nuclear weapons (section IX of the declaration). The constitution guaranteed “free development, use and protection of Russian, and other languages of national minorities” (article 10), and “development of the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious identity of all indigenous peoples and national minorities of Ukraine” (article 11).
It was this state that Russia recognised, in accordance with international law. Yet in 2014 a coup took place in Ukraine, and the subsequent events drastically changed the country. Legitimately elected president Viktor Yanukovich and his administration were ousted despite signing an agreement on peaceful transfer of power to the opposition. Kyiv unleashed hostilities against its own population in the country’s southeast.
In 2019 Ukraine renounced its neutral status. New amendments to the constitution were adopted declaring the strategic course of the state on acquiring full-fledged membership in the EU and Nato.
In 2022 Kyiv declared its intention to abandon another obligation and “reacquire” nuclear status. In reality it never had one. The country was part of the USSR, a nuclear power, and Russia as the continuing state retained control of its nuclear arsenal stationed anywhere in the former Soviet territory.
So, claims by Western propaganda that Kyiv “gave up its nuclear weapons” in exchange for guarantees under the Budapest memorandum are yet another twisting of the facts.
Ukraine’s hardships do not stem from Kyiv being a signatory to the Budapest memorandum. No memorandum can ever shield from the consequences of losing sovereignty and becoming someone else’s pawn in geopolitical games.
Ilya Rogachev
Russian ambassador to SA
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