If Joe Biden is to reset the U.S. relationship with Russia, the starting point needs to be 1994, the year the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, the U.S. and the U.K. sat side-by-side in Hungary to sign the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. Its intent and purpose was clear. Ukraine was to give up the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
In exchange, Russia would respect the existing borders of Ukraine and “refrain from the threat of or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.”
Russia violated the agreement when it annexed Crimea in 2014 and invaded eastern Ukraine. What does it say when 25 years later Ukraine is practically helpless against the giant nuclear-backed war machine of Vladimir Putin? The war in eastern Ukraine, which is now in its seventh year and shows no sign of ending, has claimed the lives of 14,000 civilians, 4,000 soldiers and displaced 2 million people.
George Jaworsky
Wollert, Australia