“Western policymakers who believe the Minsk accords would work if only Ukraine made the requisite constitutional and electoral concessions are missing a key point: that they, and Russia, forced Ukraine to make security its priority by violating the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. Russia brazenly invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine in complete violation of the memorandum. But the United States and the United Kingdom were also complicit in the breakdown of Budapest: their assurances of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity proved hollow. …
“Since the failure of Budapest means that formal international security assurances are effectively meaningless, Ukraine’s first priority has to be preserving its own security. No one can or will guarantee it, and even if they did, Ukraine would be crazy to believe a second Budapest.
“… Ukraine’s security can be assured only if Ukraine has the requisite armed forces to guarantee its own security. …The implications for the West are obvious. Only a secure Ukraine will put its name to grand bargains crafted by Russia and the West. And a secure Ukraine can only be a militarily strong Ukraine. No Western deal with Russia can possibly work if it fails to take Ukraine and its justified security concerns into account. …
“Now Ukraine needs to gain the capacity to stop a full-scale Russian invasion. …And for Ukraine to deter Russia, it needs to have the clear ability to stop Russian air power and tanks.
“Arming Ukraine – building up its military to the point that it can defend itself, but not threaten Russia – is the only way to secure a durable peace there. The sooner the West learns this lesson, the sooner Budapest will fade as a bad memory – and the sooner Minsk or its successor will have a realistic chance of resulting in peace.”
– Prof. Alexander J. Motyl, professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark, writing on the Atlantic Council website on March 29 (see http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/sick-of-the-ukraine-crisis-then-arm-ukraine).