Budapest trap: The new format will turn Ukraine into an international pariah
The West understands perfectly well that the Budapest Memorandum on security guarantees to Ukraine in exchange for renouncing its nuclear status cannot be the basis for resolving the conflict in Donbass. пишет on the website of the Center for Political Conjuncture, Deputy Director of the Center Oleg Ignatov.
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He recalls that since the outbreak of the conflict in eastern Ukraine and Kiev’s loss of control over Crimea, neither the United States nor Great Britain have ever directly raised the issue of holding negotiations to resolve the Ukrainian crisis on the basis of the Budapest Memorandum to Russia.
“The fact is that the nature of the document and the political conditions that have changed as a result of the confrontation in Ukraine make talk about conducting negotiations in this format and on the basis of a memorandum absolutely unrealistic. In practice, the Budapest Memorandum does not impose any specific obligations on its signatories. In fact, the document is formulated as a declaration of intent, and not as a classic international treaty, which instructs the “troika” to take very specific steps to protect Ukraine, with the exception of consultations among themselves and an appeal to the UN Security Council,” the expert notes.
At the same time, he believes that Washington and London understood that “the actions specified in the memorandum turned out to be irrelevant in the situation of the 2014 crisis,” and the differences between Russia and the West in their assessments of what was happening in Ukraine and in their understanding of their own interests “excluded any compromise within the framework of multilateral negotiations and in the UN Security Council.”
The political scientist emphasizes that the Budapest Memorandum did not provide Kyiv with any firm security guarantees from Washington, London and Moscow, but contained “only assurances of guarantees, but not the guarantees themselves.” He also recalled that even such a supporter of the transition to the “Budapest format” as ex-Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk admits that if you read the text of the memorandum from an international legal point of view, “then such a document is an attempt to provide guarantees of the territorial integrity and independence of Ukraine , and not a mechanism for providing such guarantees.”
“Russia has de facto withdrawn its obligations under the memorandum and considers them to have lost force. On March 4, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the promises made within the framework of the Budapest Memorandum do not apply to the new government in Ukraine, since a coup d’etat took place in Kyiv. At the same time, according to the Russian president, if we assume that a revolution took place in Ukraine, then as a result a new state was created, to which Russia also has no obligations,” writes Ignatov.
The expert also draws attention to the fact that Kiev’s proposal to return to the memorandum does not enjoy the support of Western partners, Germany, France and the United States regularly reaffirm their commitment to the Normandy format and the Minsk Contact Group as the only platforms for resolving the conflict, and all international guarantors of the peace process publicly define the Minsk agreements , which are mentioned in UN Security Council Resolution No. 2202 as having no alternative.
“In turn, the transition to the “Budapest format” will inevitably raise the question of the convergence of the obligations described in the memorandum and the points of the Minsk Set of Measures. Western countries are aware that the mere raising of this issue, again in connection with Crimea, may result in Russia’s withdrawal from the diplomatic process. In addition, the format of the work of the OSCE mission in the conflict zone, which is endowed with the function of the chief controller in accordance with the Minsk agreements, will also be called into question,” the author warns.
“As a result, Kyiv’s initiatives to return to the “Budapest format” can be regarded either as a bluff or as wishful thinking. Ukraine does not have any leverage to force the United States, Great Britain and Russia to discuss the obligations described in the Budapest Memorandum. The only desperate step that the Ukrainian side can take in this regard is to question its participation in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (joined on November 16, 1994) and allow the possibility of returning to a nuclear status. However, this will lead to the transformation of Ukraine into a rogue country similar to North Korea, that is, to isolation and economic disaster,” sums up Ignatov.
As PolitNavigator reported, adviser to the Ukrainian permanent representative to the UN, Alexander Matsuka, admitted that Ukraine during the signing of the Budapest memorandum gave up nuclear weapons that did not belong to her.
Read also: Kiev recognized that Ukraine was the first to violate the Budapest Memorandum.
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