Ukraine's Insistence on NATO Membership

Afghan Voice Agency (AVA) - International Service: The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry announced in a statement on the 30th anniversary of the signing of the "Budapest Agreement" that led to Ukraine's nuclear disarmament that Kyiv officially rejects any security guarantees that are to be offered as an alternative to Kyiv's full membership in NATO.

According to the "United 24 Media" website, December 5, 2024, coincides with the 30th anniversary of the signing of the "Budapest Agreement"; a document signed on December 5, 1994 to provide security guarantees by the signatories in exchange for the accession of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The agreement was initially signed by the three nuclear powers Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, with China and France later providing somewhat weaker individual guarantees in separate documents.

As a result of the agreement, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons between 1994 and 1996. Ukraine had the third-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world by then.

However, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry pointed to Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as evidence that signing such a document by Kiev was a failure.

“Russia’s violation of the Budapest Memorandum has set a dangerous precedent that undermines confidence in the idea of ​​nuclear disarmament,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The lack of real security guarantees in the 1990s was a “strategic mistake” that emboldened Moscow. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry called on the United States, Britain, France, China and other signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to provide Ukraine with binding security guarantees.

The statement read: “We are convinced that the only real guarantee of security for Ukraine and a deterrent against further Russian aggression against Ukraine and other countries is Ukraine’s full membership in the NATO alliance. Having gone through the bitter experience of the Budapest Memorandum, we will no longer accept any alternative to Ukraine’s full membership in NATO.”

While the West and the United States, by promoting provocative expansionism in the NATO alliance and ignoring Russia’s security interests over the past years, have created the conditions for Moscow’s military operations in Ukraine aimed at defending their interests, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry claimed in the statement that Kyiv’s membership in NATO is the only effective deterrent against a future Russian attack.

The statement claimed: “Inviting Ukraine to join NATO now would be an effective countermeasure to Russian blackmail and dispel the Kremlin’s illusions about the possibility of disrupting Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic integration. This is the only chance to stop the erosion of key principles of nuclear non-proliferation and restore confidence in nuclear disarmament.”