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Comment by spiderfarmer | Hacker News Reader

They just want the US to keep their word on promises already made. Is that so unreasonable? They gave up their nukes for it.

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The nukes were never under Ukraine control or possession. It's like saying Turkey has nukes, they don't, they are US nukes.

Here comes the Russian propaganda... The nukes belonged to Ukraine. Just like Belarus nukes belonged to them.

What is said by Russian propagandists is that Ukraine didn't have the launch codes - like it was some magical barrier that would prevent Ukraine from deploying the nukes if they wanted to.

Like Ukrainian scientists didn't play a major a role in USSR nuclear development, and didn't have the know how to just use other system to deploy the nukes.

It's part of the Russian propaganda to make Ukrainians into incompetent inferior ethnic group - why do you think they address them by derogatory ethnic slurs like "little Russians"?

It was considered enough of a big deal that there was a Treaty about it.

It was a "memorandum", which is actually not a binding treaty as far as I understand.

That's fair, I realised that later.

I think the general point still stands though. And if you read commentary from the time, it was a big deal.

> The nukes were never under Ukraine control or possession.

They were literally in their possession. hint: that's why negotiations were required for their transfer to Russia.

Unlike with Turkey, Ukraine could have easily taken complete possession of the nukes existing on its territory and they had enough resources to also take complete control, by replacing the control parts of the nukes, perhaps in at most a few months of work.

The only way in which the Russians could have stopped this would have been to nuke Ukraine before they would have been able to modify the captured nukes, but it is unlikely that this would have been permitted by the other nuclear powers.

You’re saying we already gave them the equivalent of NATO Article 5?

Not equivalent, but the USA is in violation as of today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

The USA is not in violation of that. All of points 1-6 have been complied with.

Russia is in clear violation of it, but it never promised US military intervention. All it promises is we'd go to the Security Council about it.

The memorandum didn't really anticipate one of the signatories with a UN veto being the aggressor.

The UK, France and China also signed that same agreement.

France and China signed separate, individual agreements.

The UK and France have clearly followed (and exceeded, via direct military aid it does not require) the requirements of the memorandum.

I can't find the text of China's agreement.

As has the US with all of their aid.

Yet, the US is the one that is forever chided for being negligent to the terms of the agreement.

> As has the US with all of their aid.

As I've noted upthread.

> Yet, the US is the one that is forever chided for being negligent to the terms of the agreement.

The US has absolutely complied with the Budapest Memorandum's requirements.

Military aid isn't required, it's just a good idea. The recent withdrawal of aid is a betrayal of an ally, but not a violation of the Memorandum.

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