Russia is in violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances

https://www.conservapedia.com/Ukraine#Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances:_1994

At the time of Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine held the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world, including an estimated 1,800 strategic warheads, 176 long-range ballistic missiles, and 42 strategic bombers.

To solidify security commitments to Ukraine, the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom signed the December 5, 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. The memorandum included assurances against the threat or use of force against Ukraine's territory or political independence. The countries promised to respect the sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine.

The United States took custody and control of Ukraine's obsolete nuclear stockpiles for disposal in exchange for assurances by the United States and NATO to safeguard Ukraine's independence. Ukraine was coaxed to give up it nuclear weapons in exchange for a written pledge, should Ukraine ever be threatened or invaded, the United States would be there to intervene with military power.

By 1996, Ukraine had returned all of its operational nuclear warheads to Russia in exchange for economic aid and security assurances, and Ukraine became a non-nuclear weapon state party to the 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The last strategic nuclear delivery vehicle in Ukraine was eliminated in 2001 under the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). It took years of political maneuvering and diplomatic work, starting with the Lisbon Protocol in 1992, to remove the weapons and nuclear infrastructure from Ukraine.[101]

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine Main article: 2021–2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has publicly commented on the Budapest Memorandum by arguing that it provides no true guarantee of safety due to Russia's coercive power. On 19 February 2022, Zelenskyy made a speech at the Munich Security Conference in which he said "Since 2014, Ukraine has tried three times to convene consultations with the guarantor states of the Budapest Memorandum. Three times without success. Today Ukraine will do it for the fourth time. ... If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt."[42] Putin used Zelenskyy's comments as part of his claims that Ukraine could develop nuclear weapons. Critics have disputed Putin's claims.[43] This treaty has since been violated by Russia at the outbreak of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

--------------------------------------------------------- Wikipedia intro section:

The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances comprises three identical political agreements signed at the OSCE conference in Budapest, Hungary on 5 December 1994 to provide security assurances by its signatories relating to the accession of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The memorandum was originally signed by three nuclear powers: the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States. China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents.[1]

The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. As a result of other agreements and the memorandum, between 1993 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons.[2]

Annexation of Crimea by Russia Further information: Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation

US Secretary of State John Kerry speaks with British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Deshchytsia after hosting the Budapest Memorandum Ministerial on the Ukraine crisis in Paris, France, on 5 March 2014. In February 2014, Russian forces seized or blockaded various airports and other strategic sites throughout Crimea.[32] The troops were attached to the Russian Black Sea Fleet stationed in Crimea,[33] which placed Russia in violation of the Budapest Memorandum. The Russian Foreign Ministry had confirmed the movement of armoured units attached to the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea but asserted that they were acting within the scope of the various agreements between the two countries.[citation needed] Russia responded by supporting a referendum on whether the Crimea should join it. Russia announced the referendums were being conducted by "local forces". On 16 March, Russia annexed Crimea and Ukraine vigorously protested the action as a violation of Article 1 of the Budapest Memorandum.

In response to the crisis, the Ukrainian parliament requested the Memorandum's signatories to reaffirm their commitment to the principles enshrined in the political agreement and asked for them to hold consultations with Ukraine to ease tensions.[34]

On 24 March 2014, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper led the G7 partners in an ad hoc meeting during the Nuclear Security Summit, at The Hague, for a partial suspension of Russian membership due to Russia's breach of the Budapest Memorandum. He said that Ukraine had given up its nuclear weapons "on the basis of an explicit Russian guarantee of its territorial integrity. By breaching that guarantee, President Putin has provided a rationale for those elsewhere who needed little more than that already furnished by pride or grievance to arm themselves to the teeth." Harper also indicated support for Ukraine by saying he would work with the new Ukrainian government towards a free trade agreement.[35]

In February 2016, Sergey Lavrov claimed, "Russia never violated Budapest memorandum. It contained only one obligation, not to attack Ukraine with nukes."[36] However, Canadian journalist Michael Colborne pointed out that "there are actually six obligations in the Budapest Memorandum, and the first of them is 'to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine'". Colborne also pointed out that a broadcast of Lavrov's claim on the Twitter account of Russia's embassy in the United Kingdom actually "provided a link to the text of the Budapest Memorandum itself with all six obligations, including the ones Russia has clearly violated – right there for everyone to see." Steven Pifer, an American diplomat who was involved in drafting the Budapest Memorandum, later commented on "the mendacity of Russian diplomacy and its contempt for international opinion when the foreign minister says something that can be proven wrong with less than 30 seconds of Google fact-checking?"[37] Russia argued that the United States broke the third point of the agreement by introducing and threatening further sanctions against the Yanukovych government.

On 20 April 2016, Ukraine established the Ministry of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories,[38] to manage occupied parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea regions, which are affected by Russian military intervention of 2014.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/12/05/why-care-about-ukraine-and-the-budapest-memorandum/

Why care about Ukraine and the Budapest Memorandum
Steven PiferThursday, December 5, 2019
ORDER FROM CHAOS
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Since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, the United States has provided Ukraine with $3 billion in reform and military assistance and $3 billion in loan guarantees. U.S. troops in western Ukraine train their Ukrainian colleagues. Washington, in concert with the European Union, has taken steps to isolate Moscow politically and imposed a series of economic and visa sanctions on Russia and Russians.

Steven Pifer
Nonresident Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology, Center on the United States and Europe, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative
steven_pifer
The furor over President Donald Trump’s sordid bid to extort the president of Ukraine into investigating his potential 2020 political opponent raises an obvious question: Why should the United States care so much about Ukraine, a country 5,000 miles away? A big part of the reason is that U.S. officials told the Ukrainians the United States would care when negotiating the Budapest Memorandum on security assurances, signed 25 years ago this week.

A NUCLEAR-ARMED STATE BREAKS UP
In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the United States, Russia, and Britain committed “to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine” and “to refrain from the threat or use of force” against the country. Those assurances played a key role in persuading the Ukrainian government in Kyiv to give up what amounted to the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal, consisting of some 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads.

When the USSR broke up in late 1991, there were nuclear weapons scattered in the resulting post-Soviet states. The George H. W. Bush administration attached highest priority to ensuring this would not lead to an increase in the number of nuclear weapons states. Moreover, as it watched Yugoslavia break apart violently, the Bush administration worried that the Soviet collapse might also turn violent, raising the prospect of conflict among nuclear-armed states. Ensuring no increase in the number of nuclear weapons states meant that, in practice, only Russia would retain nuclear arms. The Clinton administration pursued the same goal. With the prospect of extending the Non-Proliferation Treaty indefinitely looming, an alternative course that allowed other post-Soviet states to keep nuclear weapons would have set a bad precedent.

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Eliminating the strategic nuclear warheads, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and strategic bombers in Ukraine was a big deal for Washington. The ICBMs and bombers carried warheads of monstrous size — all designed, built, and deployed to attack America. The warheads atop the SS-19 and SS-24 ICBMs in Ukraine had explosive yields of 400-550 kilotons each — that is, 27 to 37 times the size of the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima. The 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads — more than six times the number of nuclear warheads that China currently possesses — could have destroyed every U.S. city with a population of more than 50,000 three times over, with warheads left to spare.

ASSURANCES FOR UKRAINE
Before agreeing to give up this nuclear arsenal, Kyiv sought three assurances. First, it wanted compensation for the value of the highly-enriched uranium in the nuclear warheads, which could be blended down for use as fuel for nuclear reactors. Russia agreed to provide that.

Second, eliminating ICBMs, ICBM silos, and bombers did not come cheaply. With its economy rapidly contracting, the Ukrainian government could not afford the costs. The United States agreed to cover those costs with Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction assistance.

Third, Ukraine wanted guarantees or assurances of its security once it got rid of the nuclear arms. The Budapest Memorandum provided security assurances.

Unfortunately, Russia has broken virtually all the commitments it undertook in that document. It used military force to seize, and then illegally annex, Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in early 2014. Russian and Russian proxy forces have waged war for more than five years in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, claiming more than 13,000 lives and driving some two million people from their homes.

Some have argued that, since the United States did not invade Ukraine, it abided by its Budapest Memorandum commitments. True, in a narrow sense. However, when negotiating the security assurances, U.S. officials told their Ukrainian counterparts that, were Russia to violate them, the United States would take a strong interest and respond.

Washington did not promise unlimited support. The Budapest Memorandum contains security “assurances,” not “guarantees.” Guarantees would have implied a commitment of American military force, which NATO members have. U.S. officials made clear that was not on offer. Hence, assurances.

Beyond that, U.S. and Ukrainian officials did not discuss in detail how Washington might respond in the event of a Russian violation. That owed in part to then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin. He had his flaws, but he insisted that there be no revision of the boundaries separating the states that emerged from the Soviet collapse. Yeltsin respected Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity. Vladimir Putin does not.

U.S. officials did assure their Ukrainian counterparts, however, that there would be a response. The United States should continue to provide reform and military assistance to Ukraine. It should continue sanctions on Russia. It should continue to demand that Moscow end its aggression against Ukraine. And it should continue to urge its European partners to assist Kyiv and keep the sanctions pressure on the Kremlin.

Washington should do this, because it said it would act if Russia violated the Budapest Memorandum. That was part of the price it paid in return for a drastic reduction in the nuclear threat to America. The United States should keep its word.

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No update for 2022 yet on Wikipedia... “the treaty did expire on 31 March 2019.”

Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation
Signed May 31, 1997; 24 years ago[1]
Effective 1 April 1999
Expiration 31 March 2019
Signatories
Ukraine
Russia
Languages Ukrainian, Russian

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian%E2%80%93Ukrainian_Friendship_Treaty#:~:text=The%20Treaty%20on%20Friendship%2C%20Cooperation,for%20territorial%20integrity%20and%20mutual

The Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation was an agreement between Ukraine and Russia, signed in 1997, which fixed the principle of strategic partnership, the recognition of the inviolability of existing borders, and respect for territorial integrity and mutual commitment not to use its territory to harm the security of each other. The treaty prevents Ukraine and Russia from invading one another’s country respectively, and declaring war.[2] Ukraine announced its intention not to renew the treaty in September 2018.[3] By doing so the treaty did expire on 31 March 2019.[4][3] The treaty was also known as the “Big Treaty”.[5][6]

Until 2019 the treaty was automatically renewed on each 10th anniversary of its signing, unless one party advised the other of its intention to end the treaty six months prior to the date of the renewal.[1][7]

Russia–Ukraine relations have deteriorated since the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and Russian support for separatist forces in the war in Ukraine’s Donbass region.[8] In response, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree not to extend the treaty.

Contents
1 Signing and ratification
2 Contents of the treaty
3 Termination
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

Signing and ratification
The treaty was signed in Kyiv on 31 May 1997 by the President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma and Russian President Boris Yeltsin.[1]

In Ukraine, the treaty was ratified by the Law of Ukraine No. 13/98-VR on 14 January 1998 (On ratification of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation).[9]

In Russia, on 25 December 1998, the State Duma of the Federal Assembly adopted a resolution on the adoption of the federal law “On ratification of the Agreement of Friendship, Collaboration and Partnership between the Russian Federation and Ukraine” and directed it to the Federation Council. The Federation Council approved this federal law by the Resolution on 17 February 1999. The treaty was ratified.[10]

The document superseded the previous treaty between the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of 19 November 1990 (before dissolution of the Soviet Union).[11][12]

Contents of the treaty
Under the agreement both parties ensure the citizens of the other countries’ rights and freedoms on the same basis and to the same extent that it provides for its citizens, except as prescribed by national legislation of States or international treaties.

Every country protects in established order of the rights of its citizens living in another country, in accordance with commitments to documents of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and other universally recognized principles and norms of international law, agreements within the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The agreement, among other things prematurely confirms the inviolability of borders of countries,[1] regardless that Russia and Ukraine had not finalized a border between the two countries.[13] The border was delineated in the 2003 Treaty on the Russian-Ukrainian State Border, but Ukraine has started the agreed-upon demarcation unilaterally after Russia dragged its feet.[14]

Under Article 2:
In accord with provisions of the UN Charter and the obligations of the Final Act on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the High Contracting Parties shall respect each other′s territorial integrity and reaffirm the inviolability of the borders existing between them.[15][7][16]

The Treaty document stipulates in Article 40 that the Treaty is entered into for a period of 10 years and renews automatically unless one of the parties notifies the other of its intention to curtail the Treaty.[1]

Termination
On 19 September 2018, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree not to extend the treaty. On 3 December 2018, Poroshenko drafted a legislation to Parliament to end the Treaty of Friendship immediately; with support coming from Western allies within the United Nations Security Council.[3][17] According to Poroshenko the non-renewal “does not require a vote” in the Ukrainian parliament. Ukraine announced that on 21 September 2018, it would notify the United Nations and other relevant organizations on the termination of the treaty.[18] Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it was notified on 24 September 2018 of the treaty’s termination by Ukraine, expressing regret.[19]

On 3 December 2018 Poroshenko did submit a bill on the termination of the treaty to parliament; 277 MPs supported the termination of the treaty, while 20 legislators voted against it.[20]

The Budapest Memorandum covered quite a bit more than just security guarantees:

3. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to 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;

A decent argument can be made that the West's monkeying around with Ukraine's government (insofar as corrupt influence-peddling goes, especially vis-a-vis America going back to 2013-2014) constituted a violation of Item #3, after which all bets were off.

But this Memorandum is a red herring anyway, because it lacks any means of compliance or enforcement that would be binding upon those who violated the terms therein.

This is the great fiction of "international law": it only has teeth so long as the nations who are the Great Powers agree to abide by them. Once a Great Power (be it America, China, Russia, etc. going back to the empires of old, including the British Empire, the French Empire, the Spanish Empire, and so on) decides that violating an agreement or a 'treaty' (because this memo, lacking ratification by Congress, can hardly be called a treaty) is within their national interest, they will do so (regardless of who else in the world complains).

That is the lesson of history.

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