Ukraine has “cards” – Budapest Memorandum. The United States has obligations
OPINION
After 2014, BMI (Budapest Memorandum Initiative) was founded. The goal was to knock out the disinformation that “no one owes Ukraine anything” and replace it with “the world guaranteed Ukraine security, sovereignty, and active collective action to stop the act of aggression” in exchange for giving up its nuclear arsenal.
It was argued that the Budapest Memorandum was not a “piece of paper that is worthless” (propaganda), but a fundamental political, legal and ideological document for strategic counteraction to Russian aggression (a “trump card”).
To achieve this goal, publications were made in foreign media and social media campaigns were conducted. After the outbreak of the great war, we changed the name of the initiative to Russia-Ukraine War, which currently has 360,000 subscribers.
In practice, they gathered 100 politicians, lawyers, and diplomats in Kyiv, where the key topic was the use of the Budapest Memorandum as the basis for forming a position: the world is obliged. Two presidents of Ukraine joined the platform: Leonid Kravchuk and Viktor Yushchenko (Leonid Kuchma refused to join).
Unfortunately, the government did not support this line of work as a crucial one. they decided to leave the “trump card” in the deck, and instead began to implement other formats that lacked an ideological and political basis for decisions within such platforms (with the places of consultations being Belarus, Turkey, Switzerland, etc.). Therefore, I believe that today we have a problem with the thesis that “Ukraine is not owed anything.”
What is interesting is that the readiness of the United States, Britain, and France to act in the format of the Budapest Memorandum was established. It was also found that consultations on the BM had already been held by the United States in March 2014, and it was on the basis of such consultations that decisions on sanctions against Russia were agreed.
To establish the thesis that the BM is a binding agreement, we went to court. The court in Kyiv stated that although we could not oblige the government to act within this format, the court recognized that the BM was an international treaty with all the consequences. This was our real plan.
