Oooooo, a “memorandum” signed by Donald Blinken, father of Anthony Blinken. It’s a political agreement, not a Treaty. Nothing approved by Congress. Not to mention Bill Clinton was President at the time. That tells me all I need to know. Let’s bring on WWIII over a “memorandum”.
By that logic, the didn’t-even-make-it-into-the-final-draft Baker suggestions to the USSR about preventing NATO expansion into the (now nonexistent) WARSAW PACT can be considered in the right context...
Not even a valid talking point.
The Baker statements were unadopted suggestions by the USA, that were totally rejected by the USSR (because they didn’t want to admit that the USSR could one day break up!).
And they were made in relation to a dying superpower’s ongoing hold over a bloc.
As the Belovezha Accords said in the preamble, the Soviet Union ceased to be a “geopolitical reality”.
Therefore the Baker assurances ceased to reflect geopolitical reality. Thanks to the Putinist logic, we can now agree that if Russia thinks the Budapest Memorandum and Belovezha Accords weren’t binding, we can bin the nonsense argument about “no NATO expansion into the Warsaw Pact”.
The other good thing you’ve done here is remind us that if Budapest Memorandum is not binding on Russia then it’s not binding on Ukraine either. Neither is Ukraine bound by all the other friendship agreements between itself and Russia. After all, Russia’s broken all of ‘em already.
Which means Ukraine is now free to tool up as much as it likes, even with nukes. It has no compelling reason not to join the EU or EU-NATO. And it’s free to treat Russia as a hostile.
Well done, Putin revisionists.
Russia broke it, Russia bought it.