In the Budapest Memorandum USA promised not to attack Ukraine if it gives back Russian nukes to Russia. They kept the promise.
In the same memorandum Russia promised the same thing. They broke the promise. Repeatedly.
Nonetheless, I agree that more countries should develop their own nukes. Especially the ones like Poland, Baltics and Nordics. Not because it's a good thing to do, but because the world is what it is.
The Budapest Memorandum basically only required the USA to bring any violations to the UN Security Council, which we did in 2022. I think we have a moral obligation to continue providing military aid and diplomatic assistance but there is no legal obligation to do anything more.
That's right. And let's not forget that Europe and USA have been helping directly for a few years now anyway.
It's really disappointing how much misinformation gets reiterated on the Internet with regards to this memorandum, given how short the document is and how easy it is to verify its contents oneself.
PS. NATO's Article 5 is also worth a read. It does not guarantee what is commonly claimed.
In the history of the Alliance there is only a single country that invoked article 5, and it was the US with 9/11 that lead to the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia, Italy, New Zealand to send resources and troops to help with Afghanistan.
And managed to get people involved in Iraq namely United Kingdom, Australia, Poland.
And this situation was way worse and way less called for than the Ukrainians defending themselves...
EDIT/NB: I listed just the major contributors, some other countries participated in different ways and at different levels, but still this is important to mention here...
It is a fact, that NATO Article 5 doesn't guarantee anything regardless of other countries' response to USA triggering it, just as it is a fact, that the Budapest Memorandum was mischaracterized in this thread and that both the Europe and USA did help Ukraine. Should we not go where the facts are?
If you're about that the USA should continue helping Ukraine, then I did not question this point of view at all. Pointing out factual errors is not equal to taking a stance.
The implication that I read from what your wrote suggested that the US could offer "assistance" or sit it out, which is not an acceptable stance to hold, by history and the assistance that was provided in need.
Friendship among nations sometimes involves transactions that transcend the pure material considerations, and this shift in alignment is not desirable by anyone.
That's what I meant by "let's not go there".
But I see that basically we are in agreement and I also agree that article 5 interpretation could be dicey.
> ... seek immediate UN Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine ... if they should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used
This seems like the passage which would cover it. The UN is able to authorize use of force by member states against the aggressor. Though it looks like it hasn't done that - probably because of Russia's permanent position on the UN Security Council which would veto any such measures.
As Ukrainian, I can say that you don’t understand anything.
Some data points might be correct, but you have not enough data to connect the dots, so you make wrong conclusions.
Russia was threatening with invading Ukraine right from the beginning of its recent independence.
There were two large schools of thoughts how to deal with it:
1) try to “go around rain drops” by not provoking Russia but simultaneously to not give up sovereignty
2) move as fast as possible and seek protection from NATO like baltics and other eastern europeans.
When Russia starts regaining power internally, it became much harder to “go around raindrops”, as russia start to perform FSB style operation to discredit Ukraine in the west and to enforce its will on the inside.
Kravchuk (2nd president), falls the victim of that when Ukraine was accused of selling weapons to counties under sanctions, which made him a pariah in the west.
Later he was accused of ordering of killing a journalist which made him a pariah on the inside.
Also it was time when Russia tried to make the first attempt of annexing Crimea by trying to get first island near it - (Tusla).
Kuchma was able to make some agreement with russia a relax the tensions.
Then russia decided that the next president have to be Yanukovych - a criminal with served jail time.
An opposed politician was Yuschenko, who was famous for his reforms on the national bank and was considered by the time a successful manager and politician.
What’s worse, Russia helped to rig the elections and later poison Yuschenko with dioxin.
This caused a first revolution.
Yuschinko understood very well what he was dealing with and saw the only salvation from NATO as the threats from Russia increased.
And so on, and so forth.
US was not in favor of Ukrainian independence for a very long time and never helped in any way, except for disarming. The first time US president arrived to Ukraine was to talk the parliament out of proclaiming independence.
Europe was always afraid of russia and very careful with Ukraine.
Russia was always threatening and tried to regain control over Ukraine - both politically, by sabotage, special operations and military.
Ukraine was looking for help and screaming that russia will attack sooner or later.
Ukraine consider itself to be part of Europe by values, and is fighting russia for more than a century already paying huge price.
NATO was considered the only way to finally stop this cycle, but with US withdrawing, it may seems that all of the struggle was in vain as Europe might not be capable to protect even itself.
