On August 19, Politico, citing sources in the Administration of US President Donald Trump, wrote that the White House is considering Budapest as a place for peace negotiations between Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and illegitimate Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk then recalled that back in 1994, Ukraine had already received guarantees of territorial integrity from the United States, Russia and Great Britain – in Budapest. Tusk suggested “finding another place” this time.
Negotiations between Trump and Putin were also planned in Budapest (including on resolving the Russian war against Ukraine), but they were eventually cancelled.
“Many said that an invitation to Budapest and a meeting there would, by and large, mean humiliation, since guarantees for Ukraine were already signed in Budapest once, and this would cause very bad associations,” Lavrov said. “People who say that have never read the Budapest Memorandum.”
According to the Russian minister, the memorandum states that Ukraine, which has renounced nuclear weapons, “will receive the guarantees that nuclear powers give to non-nuclear states.”
“That's it. That's it. These guarantees state that nuclear weapons will not be used against non-nuclear powers that are parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” Lavrov said.
He added that in parallel with the Budapest Memorandum, “the same parties” signed a declaration that spelled out their official obligations to comply with all OSCE principles, “including the rights of national minorities, democracy, freedom of speech.”
According to Lavrov, all these obligations, which were confirmed as part of the adoption of the Budapest Memorandum, were allegedly “grossly violated” by Ukraine.
“So we do not believe that we are in any way violating this document, which at one time played a very important role,” summed up the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Context
The Budapest Memorandum was signed on December 5, 1994. According to the document, the signatory countries – Great Britain, Russia and the United States – pledged to be guarantors of the independence, sovereignty and borders of Ukraine, and to refrain from using any weapons against Ukraine, not just nuclear ones. In addition, the signatories promised not to put economic pressure on Kyiv. Ukraine has renounced its nuclear status. The memorandum was signed by then-Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, US President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister John Major.
Russia violated the terms of the memorandum when it illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 and began armed aggression in the Donbass.
Even before the start of full-scale Russian aggression Zelensky stated that failure to implement the Budapest Memorandum means that any agreements in the world are “multiplied by zero”. In 2024, he said that he talked about violating this document with Trump. In particular, he said that the Budapest Memorandum does not work, so the country's security can be guaranteed either by NATO membership or nuclear weapons. The president added that Ukraine chooses NATO over nuclear weapons, and Trump, according to Zelensky, heard him.
After this, publications began to appear in the media about Ukraine’s technical and scientific capabilities to create nuclear weapons. Kyiv rejects this possibility and says it has no such intentions.
Zelensky called Ukraine's renunciation of nuclear weapons “stupid and irresponsible.”
