I UNDERSTAND CONFUSION, OUR MSM DOES NOT COVER UKRAINE therefore not much info to understand issues.
HISTORY of U.S. involvement:
Ukraine had inherited physical, if not operational, control over the world’s third-largest stockpile of nukes—roughly 1800 warheads and an arsenal bigger than China, Britain and France combined. While Russia retained possession of most of the necessary infrastructure to make use of these nuclear armaments, the threat of nuclear proliferation had grown dramatically overnight. In a sweeping effort to consolidate and secure the former Soviet Union’s nuclear stockpiles, Russia, the UK, the US, and Ukraine concluded two years of negotiations with what came to be known as the Budapest Memorandum. All four governments signed it on December 5th, 1994.
Among other things the Memorandum—the full text of which can be found here—promised signatories would:
• “respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine”
• “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine”
• “refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind”
BUDAPEST MEMORANDUM
First: emphasized and reinforced obligations that ALL of the signatories had already agreed to via the UN Charter.
Secondly: strongly stressed the importance of Ukraine’s territorial viability, and directly referenced the danger of one state using “economic coercion” to flex its muscles against Kiev. It also recognized the importance of a few stakeholders in Ukraine’s future and speedily resolved a pressing proliferation dilemma.
All this helped to REAFFIRM, if only politically, something already LEGALLY PROTECTED pursuant to the UN Charter: Ukraine’s sovereignty.
UKRAINE’S SOVEREIGNTY was surely compromised, despite security assurances from Memorandum signatories, and despite Kiev’s forsaking of its nuclear stockpiles.
In that regard the Memorandum has shown some serious cracks. And these could have dramatic and systemic ramifications, as the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, explained recently:
It could mean that countries that have nuclear weapons won’t want to give them up, while countries that don’t have them may want to acquire them because that will be the only way to protect their territorial integrity.
http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/11/throwback-thursday-the-1994-budapest-memorandum/
MORE CURRENT SUMMARY:
http://www.cipe.org/blog/2016/01/06/will-there-ever-be-a-resolution-in-eastern-ukraine/#.Vzi40iEYHWQ
Thank you for the info.