Memorandum on Security Assurances in connection with the Republic of Belarus'/Republic of Kazakhstan's/Ukraine's accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons | |
---|---|
Signed | 5 December 1994 |
Location | Budapest, Hungary |
Original signatories | |
Languages |
|
Full text at Wikisource | |
|
The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances comprises three substantially 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 three memoranda were 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 memoranda, signed in Patria Hall at the Budapest Convention Center with US Ambassador Donald M. Blinken amongst others in attendance, [2] prohibited the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, "except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations." As a result of other agreements and the memorandum, between 1993 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons. [3] [4]
According to the three memoranda, [5] Russia, the US and the UK confirmed their recognition of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine becoming parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and effectively abandoning their nuclear arsenal to Russia and that they agreed to the following:
Until Ukraine returned the Russian nuclear weapons stationed on its soil, it had the world's third-largest nuclear weapons stockpile, [9] [10] of which Ukraine had physical but no operational control. Russia controlled the codes needed to operate the nuclear weapons through electronic Permissive Action Links and the Russian command and control system, although this could not be sufficient guarantee against Ukrainian access. [11] [12] Formally, these weapons were controlled by the Commonwealth of Independent States. [13] [14] Belarus only had mobile missile launchers, and Kazakhstan had chosen to quickly return its nuclear warheads and missiles to Russia. Ukraine went through a period of internal debate on their approach. [3] [15]
On 23 May 1992, Russia, the U.S., Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine signed the Lisbon Protocol to the START I treaty, ahead of ratifying the treaty later. The protocol committed Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to adhere to the NPT as non-nuclear weapons states as soon as possible. However, the terms for the transfer of the nuclear warheads were not agreed, and some Ukrainian officials and parliamentarians started to discuss the possibility of retaining some of the modern Ukrainian built RT-23 (SS-24) missiles and Soviet built warheads. [15] [16]
In 1993, two regiments of UR-100N (SS-19) missiles in Ukraine were withdrawn to storage because warhead components were past their operational life, and Ukraine's political leadership realised that Ukraine could not become a credible nuclear military force as they could not maintain the warheads and ensure long term nuclear safety. Later in 1993, the Ukrainian and Russian governments signed a series of bilateral agreements giving up Ukrainian claims to the nuclear weapons and the Black Sea Fleet, in return for $2.5 billion of gas and oil debt cancellation and future supplies of fuel for its nuclear power reactors. Ukraine agreed to ratify the START I and NPT treaties promptly. This caused severe public criticism leading to the resignation of Ukrainian Defence Minister Morozov. [3] On 18 November 1993, the Rada passed a motion agreeing to START I but renouncing the Lisbon Protocol, suggesting Ukraine would only decommission 36% of missile launchers and 42% of the warheads on its territory, and demanded financial compensation for the tactical nuclear weapons removed in 1992. This caused U.S. diplomatic consternation, and the following day Ukrainian President Kravchuk said "we must get rid of [these nuclear weapons]. This is my viewpoint from which I have not and will not deviate." He then brought a new proposal to the Rada. [15] [16]
On 15 December 1993, U.S. Vice President Al Gore visited Moscow for a meeting. Following side discussions, a U.S and Russian delegation, including U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, flew to Ukraine to agree to the outlines of a trilateral agreement including U.S. assistance in dismantling the nuclear systems in Ukraine and compensation for the uranium in nuclear warheads. Participants were invited to Washington on 3–4 January to finalise the agreement. A Trilateral Statement with a detailed annex was agreed, based on the previously agreed terms but with detailed financial arrangements and a firm commitment to an early start to the transfer of at least 200 warheads to Russia and the production in Russia of nuclear reactor fuel for Ukraine. Warheads would be removed from all RT-23s (SS-24) within 10 months. However Ukraine did not want a commitment to transfer all warheads by 1 June 1996 to be made public for domestic political reasons, and Russia did not want the financial compensation for uranium made public concerned that Belarus and Kazakhstan would also demand this. It was decided to exclude these two matters from the published agreement, but cover them in private letters between the countries' presidents.
Another key point was that U.S. State Department lawyers made a distinction between "guarantee" and "assurance", referring to the security guarantees that were desired by Ukraine in exchange for non-proliferation. In the end a statement was read into the negotiation record that the (according to the U.S. lawyers) lesser sense of the English word "assurance" would be the sole implied translation for all appearances of both terms in all three language versions of the statement. [15]
President Clinton made a courtesy stop at Kyiv on his way to Moscow for the Trilateral Statement signing, only to discover Ukraine was having second thoughts about signing. Clinton told Kravchuk not signing would risk major damage to U.S.-Ukraine relations. After some minor rewording, the Trilateral Statement was signed by the three presidents in Moscow in front of the media on 14 January 1994. [15] [17]
External video | |
---|---|
President Clinton arrived back at the White House by helicopter from a one-day trip to Budapest, Hungary, C-SPAN |
The fabled "Budapest Memorandum" is actually three documents signed individually on 5 December 1994 by the three leaders of the ex-Soviet nations, together with the guarantor nations: United States, United Kingdom and Russia. So the UNTERM portal notes for one: "To distinguish this from the other two Budapest Memorandums of the same date, this one could be referred to as the 'Budapest Memorandum regarding Kazakhstan'". [18]
After this was agreed, the U.S. used its Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction programme to provide financial assistance over $300 million (equivalent to $548 million in 2021), and technical assistance in decommissioning the nuclear weapons and delivery systems, which took to 2008 to fully complete. [3] The U.S. also doubled other economic aid to Ukraine to $310 million (equivalent to $567 million in 2021) for 1994. [19]
In 2009, Russia and the United States released a joint statement that the memorandum's security assurances would still be respected after the expiration of the START Treaty. [20]
In 2013, the government of Belarus complained that American sanctions against it were in breach of Article 3 of the Memorandum. The US government responded that its sanctions were targeted at combating human rights violations and other illicit activities of the government of Belarus and not the population of Belarus. [21]
In February 2014, Russian forces seized or blockaded various airports and other strategic sites throughout Crimea. [22] The troops were attached to the Russian Black Sea Fleet stationed in Crimea, [23] 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. Crimea parliament announces referendum on the Autonomous republic's future in accordance with the law "On the Autonomous Republic of Crimea". On 16 March the referendum was held, on 17 March Crimea declared independence and on 21 March it was incorporated into the Russian Federation. Ukraine vigorously protested the action as a violation of Article 1 of the Budapest Memorandum.
After the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, Canada, [24] France, Germany, Italy, Japan, [25] the UK, [26] and US [27] [28] stated that Russian involvement was a breach of its Budapest Memorandum obligations to Ukraine and in violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity.
On 1 March the Address of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to the Guarantor States in accordance with the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 on Security Assurances in connection with Ukraine's accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was published. [29] [30]
On 4 March the Russian president Vladimir Putin replied to a question on the violation of the Budapest Memorandum, describing the current Ukrainian situation as a revolution: "a new state arises, but with this state and in respect to this state, we have not signed any obligatory documents". [31] Russia stated that it had never been under obligation to "force any part of Ukraine's civilian population to stay in Ukraine against its will". Russia suggested that the US was in violation of the Budapest Memorandum and described the Euromaidan as a US-instigated coup. [32]
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 from the G8 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 assurance of its territorial integrity. By breaching that assurance, 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. [33]
In February 2016, Sergey Lavrov claimed, "Russia never violated Budapest memorandum. It contained only one obligation, not to attack Ukraine with nukes." [34] 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?" [35] 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, [36] to manage occupied parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea regions, which are affected by Russian military intervention of 2014.
On 25 November 2018, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) coast guard fired upon and captured three Ukrainian Navy vessels after they attempted to transit from the Black Sea into the Sea of Azov through the Kerch Strait on their way to the port of Mariupol. [37] [38] On 27 November 2018, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine appealed to the signatory states of the Budapest Memorandum to hold urgent consultations to ensure full compliance with the memorandum's commitments and the immediate cessation of Russian aggression against Ukraine. [39] [40] [41]
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 [i.e. United States and United Kingdom]. 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. [44]
Under the agreement, the signatories offered Ukraine "security assurances" in exchange for its adherence to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The memorandum bundled together a set of assurances that Ukraine had already held from the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) Final Act, the United Nations Charter and the Non-Proliferation Treaty [1] but the Ukrainian government found it valuable to have these assurances in a Ukraine-specific document. [45] [46]
The Budapest Memorandum was negotiated at political level, but it is not entirely clear whether the instrument is devoid entirely of legal provisions. It refers to assurances, but it does not impose a legal obligation of military assistance on its parties. [1] [46] According to Stephen MacFarlane, a professor of international relations, "It gives signatories justification if they take action, but it does not force anyone to act in Ukraine." [45] In the US, neither the George H. W. Bush administration nor the Clinton administration was prepared to give a military commitment to Ukraine, and they did not believe the US Senate would ratify an international treaty and so the memorandum was adopted in more limited terms. [46] The memorandum has a requirement of consultation among the parties "in the event a situation arises that raises a question concerning the ... commitments" set out in the memorandum. [47] Whether or not the memorandum sets out legal obligations, the difficulties that Ukraine has encountered since early 2014 may cast doubt on the credibility of future security assurances that are offered in exchange for nonproliferation commitments. [48] Regardless, the United States publicly maintains that "the Memorandum is not legally binding", calling it a "political commitment". [21]
Ukrainian international law scholars such as Olexander Zadorozhny maintain that the Memorandum is an international treaty because it satisfies the criteria for one, as fixed by the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) and is "an international agreement concluded between States in written form and governed by international law". [49]
China and France gave security assurances for Ukraine in separate documents. China's governmental statement of 4 December 1994 did not call for mandatory consultations if questions arose but only for "fair consultations". France's declaration of 5 December 1994 did not mention consultations. [1]
Scholars assumed at the time that Ukraine's decision to sign the Budapest Memorandum was proof of Ukraine's development as a democracy and its desire to step away from the post-Soviet world and make first steps toward a European future. For 20 years, until the 2014 Russian military occupation of regions of Ukraine, [50] the Ukrainian nuclear disarmament was an exemplary case of nuclear non-proliferation.
The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (1972–2002) was an arms control treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union on the limitation of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems used in defending areas against ballistic missile-delivered nuclear weapons. It was intended to reduce pressures to build more nuclear weapons to maintain deterrence. Under the terms of the treaty, each party was limited to two ABM complexes, each of which was to be limited to 100 anti-ballistic missiles.
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, is an international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament. Between 1965 and 1968, the treaty was negotiated by the Eighteen Nation Committee on Disarmament, a United Nations-sponsored organization based in Geneva, Switzerland.
START I was a bilateral treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union on the reduction and the limitation of strategic offensive arms. The treaty was signed on 31 July 1991 and entered into force on 5 December 1994. The treaty barred its signatories from deploying more than 6,000 nuclear warheads and a total of 1,600 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and bombers.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was an arms control treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signed the treaty on 8 December 1987. The US Senate approved the treaty on 27 May 1988, and Reagan and Gorbachev ratified it on 1 June 1988.
The Russian Federation is known to possess or have possessed three types of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and chemical weapons. It is one of the five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany , or the Two Plus Four Agreement , is an international agreement that allowed the reunification of Germany in the early 1990s. It was negotiated in 1990 between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, and the Four Powers which had occupied Germany at the end of World War II in Europe: France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In the treaty, the Four Powers renounced all rights they held in Germany, allowing a reunited Germany to become fully sovereign the following year. At the same time, the two German states agreed to confirm their acceptance of the existing border with Poland, and accepted that the borders of Germany after unification would correspond only to the territories then administered by West and East Germany, with the exclusion and renunciation of any other territorial claims.
As the collapse of the Soviet Union appeared imminent, the United States and their NATO allies grew concerned of the risk of nuclear weapons held in the Soviet republics falling into enemy hands. The Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program was initiated by the Nunn–Lugar Act, which was authored and cosponsored by Sens. Sam Nunn (D-GA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN). According to the CTR website, the purpose of the CTR Program was originally "to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction and their associated infrastructure in former Soviet Union states." As the peace dividend grew old, an alternative 2009 explanation of the program was "to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction in states of the former Soviet Union and beyond". The CTR program funds have been disbursed since 1997 by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).
The original Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) was negotiated and concluded during the last years of the Cold War and established comprehensive limits on key categories of conventional military equipment in Europe and mandated the destruction of excess weaponry. The treaty proposed equal limits for the two "groups of states-parties", the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact. In 2007, Russia "suspended" its participation in the treaty, and on 10 March 2015, citing NATO's de facto breach of the Treaty, Russia formally announced it was "completely" halting its participation in it as of the next day.
Unilateral disarmament is a policy option, to renounce weapons without seeking equivalent concessions from one's actual or potential rivals. It was most commonly used in the twentieth century in the context of unilateral nuclear disarmament, a recurrent objective of peace movements in countries such as the United Kingdom.
The Collective Security Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental military alliance in Eurasia. The CSTO consists of select post-Soviet states. The treaty had its origins in the Soviet Armed Forces, which was replaced by the United Armed Forces of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and then by the successor armed forces of the respective independent states.
The Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (CANWFZ) treaty is a legally binding commitment by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan not to manufacture, acquire, test, or possess nuclear weapons. The treaty was signed on 8 September 2006 at Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakhstan, and is also known as Treaty of Semipalatinsk, Treaty of Semei, or Treaty of Semey.
The relationship between Ukraine and the United Kingdom has been strong. Ukraine and the UK have partners in politics, military and economically. Both share similar values regarding freedom of expression, democracy and human rights. Due to many factors Ukraine has been called by some as "Britain's closest European ally".
Russia–Ukraine relations are the bilateral ties between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Following the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity in 2014, Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula was occupied by unmarked Russian forces, and later annexed by Russia, while pro-Russia separatists simultaneously engaged the Ukrainian military in an armed conflict for control over eastern Ukraine; these events marked the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War. In a major escalation of the conflict on 24 February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the Ukrainian mainland across a broad front, causing Ukraine to sever all formal diplomatic ties with Russia.
Prior to 1991, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union and had Soviet nuclear weapons in its territory. On December 1, 1991, Ukraine, the second most powerful republic in the Soviet Union (USSR), voted overwhelmingly for independence, which ended any realistic chance of the Soviet Union staying together even on a limited scale. More than 90% of the electorate expressed their support for Ukraine's declaration of independence, and they elected the chairman of the parliament, Leonid Kravchuk, as the first president of the country. At the meetings in Brest, Belarus on December 8, and in Alma Ata on December 21, the leaders of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine formally dissolved the Soviet Union and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
A security assurance, in the context of nuclear warfare, is an expression of a political position by a nuclear-armed nation intended to placate other non-nuclear-armed nations. There are two types of security assurance: positive and negative. A positive assurance states that the nation giving it will aid any or a particular non-nuclear-armed nation in retaliation if it is a victim of nuclear attack. A negative assurance is not the opposite but instead means that a nuclear-armed nation has promised not to use nuclear weapons except in retaliation for a nuclear attack against itself.
The Lisbon Protocol to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was a document signed by representatives of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan that recognized the four states as successors of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and all of them assume obligations of the Soviet Union under the START I treaty. The protocol was signed in Lisbon, Portugal, on 23 May 1992.
International reactions to the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation have largely been condemnatory of Russia's actions, supportive of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and supportive of finding a quick end to the crisis. The United States and the European Union threatened and later enacted sanctions against Russia for its role in the crisis, and urged Russia to withdraw. Russia has accused the United States and the EU of funding and directing the revolution and retaliated to the sanctions by imposing its own.
Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act of 1991, 22 U.S.C. § 2551, was chartered to amend the Arms Export Control Act enacting the transfer of Soviet military armaments and ordnances to NATO marking the conclusion of the Cold War. The Act sanctions the Soviet nuclear arsenal displacement shall be in conjunction with the implementation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. It funds the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program.
The collapse of the Soviet Union made Kazakhstan, the fourth-largest nuclear power in the world, leading to its rapid denuclearization. Formally known as the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the former republic had a considerably large nuclear infrastructure due to its reliance on civilian nuclear programs as a means to develop its economy. The nuclear infrastructure and economy of Kazakhstan heavily depended on the cooperation between their country and Russia since its inception as an independent country.
There are some reports that Ukraine had established effective custody, but not operational control, of the cruise missiles and gravity bombs. ... By early 1994 the only barrier to Ukraine's ability to exercise full operational control over the nuclear weapons on missiles and bombers deployed on its soil was its inability to circumvent Russian permissive action links (PALs).
Ukrainian officials always underline that they provide purely administrative control over the strategic weapons, while the Russians provide 'operational' control. ... technical features themselves could not be considered a sufficient guarantee against Ukraine gaining unauthorized access to weapons.
The Minister of State for the Armed Forces (Mr. Jeremy Hanley): ... Some weapons are also possessed by Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, but these are controlled by the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Jeffrey Lewis: Ukraine did not possess nuclear weapons after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were not the third largest nuclear power. They did not give up those weapons because they did not possess them. ... The Rocket Forces pushed back and instead of taking the Ukrainian oath were able to arrange to take an oath to the Commonwealth of Independent States.