Budapest Memorandum Ukraine, Great Britain, Russia and the United States signed on December 5, 1994. The document established security guarantees in connection with the accession of Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In 1996, this accession took place.
Key Points
The text of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum provided for Ukraine’s obligation to remove all nuclear weapons from its territory on time. In turn, the Russian Federation, the United States and the United Kingdom pledged:
- Respect the sovereignty, existing borders and independence of Ukraine in accordance with the OSCE Final Act.
- Do not use any weapons against political independence, territorial integrity of Ukraine, unless for self-defense and in other cases in accordance with the UN Charter.
- Refrain from economic coercion, which is aimed at subordinating the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty to its own interests and thereby securing any advantages for itself.
- Demand immediate action by the UN Security Council if Ukraine as a country party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons becomes a threatened object or a victim of aggression using nuclear weapons.
- Do not use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, with the exception of cases of an attack by that country on states associated with the memorandum, their territory and their allies.
- Provide advice if disputes arise regarding the above obligations.
China and France
At the time the Budapest Memorandum was signed, two more nuclear powers, France and the PRC, were full members of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. However, they did not subscribe to the text of the document, but spoke about guarantees by issuing relevant statements. Their difference was that there was no clause on mandatory counseling in controversial situations.
Legal status
At present, disputes over whether the document is legally binding on the parties do not cease. As of 2014, the Budapest Memorandum has not been ratified. According to Vladimir Ryabtsev, the first secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, who worked in this position in 1994-1995. and who participated in the preparation of the document, when signing the speech on its ratification in the state-parties, was not. Then, in the opinion of Ryabtsev, there was an understanding that the Budapest memorandum, the text of which was adopted by the participating countries, is mandatory for steady implementation.
Ryabtsev also expressed the view that the Russian Federation back in 2003, when there was a conflict around the Tuz island, showed the opposite position on the significance and binding nature of the document signed in Hungary. The former first secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine stated that in 2010 he finally understood that the Budapest memorandum of 1994 is not an international legally binding document, since the discussions held within the framework of the Review Conference clearly demonstrated that it is only necessary to fulfill the treaty that has been ratified by the state . However, Vladimir Ryabtsev does not agree with the currently prevailing classification of the Memorandum as a document expressing the obligations of the parties, but considers it an interstate agreement that clearly enshrines the implementation of the provisions.
Opinion of other political figures
Volodymyr Gorbulin, the ex-secretary of the Security Council of Ukraine, and Oleksandr Litvinenko, Ph.D. in political sciences, spoke out in September 2009 that Ukraine should convene an international conference during which to prepare a new agreement on security guarantees that will replace the Budapest memorandum. To participate in the conference, it was proposed to involve states that guaranteed the security of Ukraine in 1994, as well as other key geopolitical players.
Crimean crisis and compliance with the Memorandum
President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, on the background of the events in Crimea on March 1, 2014, received permission from the Federation Council to use the Russian Armed Forces on the territory of the Ukrainian state until the socio-political situation in this country is normalized. Such measures were due, according to Putin, to the extraordinary situation in Ukraine that threatened the lives of our compatriots, as well as to the fact that in accordance with an international treaty, military personnel of the RF Armed Forces are deployed on the territory of the Ukrainian state. No one officially announced the introduction of troops, but there have been numerous cases of capture by people of Ukraine’s armed forces without identification marks. According to the Ukrainian authorities, these were Russian military personnel.
Putin's statements
The president of Russia at first denied that our soldiers were involved in the Crimean crisis. However, after Crimea became part of the Russian Federation, Putin confirmed that the Russian military supported the peninsula’s self-defense forces during the referendum. Such actions, according to the president, were taken in order to ensure conditions for the free expression of the will of Crimeans and the preservation of a peaceful situation in Crimea . Later, Vladimir Putin said that Russia never hid the fact of using its troops to block the military units of Ukrainians.
Budapest memorandum through the eyes of the Russian authorities
Our country officially rejects all charges of violating the 1994 agreements and generally their applicability to the situation in Crimea. On March 4, 2014, the Russian president expressed the opinion that, since the revolution took place in Ukraine, it can be considered that a new state was formed on its territory, and Russia did not sign any binding documents towards it.
On April 1, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement that the Russian Federation never guaranteed that it would force part of Ukraine against the will of local residents to remain in its composition, and the 1994 Budapest memorandum does not apply to circumstances that arose as a result of socio-economic and internal political factors. . These factors included the Russian Foreign Ministry events in the Crimea.
The position of the Russian Federation on the merits of the issue is as follows: the Budapest memorandum in its conception has only an obligation not to threaten the use of nuclear weapons and not to use them against non-nuclear states, which Ukraine is. Russia fully fulfills this obligation, and it is not violated in any way.
The position of the Ukrainian authorities
The Ukrainian side believes that the actions of the Russian Federation in Crimea, including the entry of the peninsula into Russia, violate the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. On March 21, 2014, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the Declaration on the struggle for the liberation of Ukraine and stated in it that the Russian Federation not only violated the current legislation of a sovereign Ukrainian state, but also ignored the norms of international law that are enshrined in the UN Charter.
On March 27, 2014, Andriy Deshchitsa, acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, during a speech at a meeting of the UN General Assembly, said that the integral part of the Ukrainian state after a two-week military occupation was forcibly annexed by a country that previously committed itself to guarantee the sovereignty, independence and integrity of Ukraine in accordance with Budapest Memorandum. Deshchitsa asked the UN General Assembly to support a resolution on the territorial integrity of Ukraine, which would declare a referendum held in Crimea void.
Finally
On December 5, 2014, on the twentieth anniversary of the Budapest Memorandum, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Prime Minister of Ukraine, once again called on the parties to the agreement to take decisive joint actions to force Russia to fulfill its obligations. In turn, Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, said that the Memorandum did not contain obligations to recognize the coup d'etat in Ukraine. And on December 6, 2014, members of the Crimean Initiative group said that Ukraine violated the provisions of the Budapest memorandum, since at the time of its signing the sovereignty of this country did not extend to the Republic of Crimea, and in general the peninsula was illegally part of the Ukrainian state for many years.
As can be seen, disputes regarding the status of the document signed on December 5, 1994 have not subsided to this day. We can only follow the development of events.