OP-ED by Ambassador of Russia to South Africa Ilya Rogachev
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 the International Law. In particular, Russia is blamed for alleged violation of the Budapest memorandum with regard to Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and the UN Charter.
Like other pro-Ukrainian narratives, this one works only where there is lack of factual knowledge.
An important point is that the Budapest memorandum was signed in December 1994, and back then Ukraine wasn’t the country we know today. Basic principles of Ukraine’s state and social system were enshrined in a number of fundamental documents, like 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 of Ukraine 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 that state that Russia recognized in accordance with the International Law.
Yet, in 2014 a coup took place in Ukraine, and the subsequent events drastically changed the country. Legitimately elected President Yanukovich and his administration were ousted despite signing an agreement on peaceful transfer of power to the opposition. Kiev unleashed hostilities against its own population in the country’s South-East.
In 2019, Ukraine renounced its neutral status. New amendments to the Constitution were adopted declaring strategic course of the state on acquiring full-fledged membership in the EU and NATO.
In 2022, Kiev 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 Kiev ‘gave up its nuclear weapons’ in exchange for guarantees under the Budapest memorandum are yet another fact twisting.
However, Ukraine’s hardships do not stem from Kiev being a signatory to the Budapest memorandum. No memorandum can ever shield from consequences of losing sovereignty and becoming someone else’s pawn in geopolitical games.