Ihor SMESHKO. Europe cannot be secure without Ukraine’s security

Realizing its high responsibility for preserving peace in Europe and the world as well as the security of its own people, and given the refusal of NATO countries to accept Ukraine into its membership and guarantee its protection in accordance with Article 5 of the NATO Charter, the Ukrainian government should take the initiative to hold appropriate consultations and respond diplomatically to Moscow’s proposals for new international agreements between the United States and Russia to guarantee Ukraine’s non-accession to NATO.

The starting point of Ukraine’s diplomatic position should be to remind Russia that the need for new international agreements is based on the practice of implementing the old ones. If the old international agreements are not binding on one of the signatories, how can we trust the new ones? After all, it has already become a fact of history that Russia has violated the 1975 Helsinki Accords, one of the principles of which is that the territorial integrity of a state and the right of a sovereign state to decide on its own cooperation with other countries or alliances are not subject to discussion by other countries.

Based on the fact that in 2014, Russia violated the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, annexed Crimea, and occupied part of eastern Ukraine—which is a violation of international treaties such as the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and the 1997 Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between the two countries—in theory, Ukraine could be ready for new negotiations on the issue raised by Moscow, but only in a package discussion and in exchange for possible new guarantees demanded by Moscow to resolve the following related issues in practice:

1. Russia’s de-occupation of all the territory of Ukraine it has seized since 2014, including Crimea, and the return of all the territories of Ukraine temporarily under its control to Ukraine’s sovereign state control in accordance with its internationally recognized borders.
2. Supplementing the 1994 Budapest Memorandum with an additional agreement by the nuclear weapon states-signatories, which should detail the procedure and mechanism for implementing measures for the future protection of the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine’s borders. Such additions should contain legally binding guarantees to provide Ukraine with all possible elements of support: diplomatic, informational, economic, and military if it becomes a victim of new aggression.

This is because the text of the current version of this international treaty has not worked since Russia seized Crimea in 2014. This has already led not only to grave consequences for Ukraine but also to the actual destruction of the entire system of international agreements on nuclear disarmament established by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

NATO itself should also become an additional security guarantor of Ukraine’s possible neutral status in exchange for its commitment not to join NATO. The best option would be for NATO to join the Budapest Memorandum as a new collective signatory and a guarantor of all possible support for Ukraine if it becomes a victim of aggression or subject to any pressure – economic, political, diplomatic, informational, or military.

It was with NATO that Ukraine signed a Charter on a Distinctive Partnership in 1997, in which the Alliance “welcomes and supports the fact that Ukraine received security assurances from all five nuclear-weapon states parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapon state party to the NPT, and recalls the commitments undertaken by the United States and the United Kingdom, together with Russia, and by France unilaterally, which took the historic decision in Budapest in 1994 to provide Ukraine with security assurances as a non-nuclear weapon state party to the NPT.”

This would confirm the effectiveness of the NPT and restore the international legal regime of nuclear disarmament, which has been destroyed today, which would become a touchstone of the effectiveness of the policy of international legal safeguards in nuclear disarmament and a clear example for other countries.

Given that Ukraine has received security assurances from all five nuclear weapon states-parties to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state-party to the NPT, and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum actually constitutes a single entity with the NPT, the issue of restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity is directly related to the international nuclear non-proliferation regime, global security and the future of the nuclear disarmament process in the world.

3. Granting Ukraine the status of a major non-NATO strategic partner by the United States in recognition of its outstanding contribution to strengthening the US defense capabilities through the voluntary elimination of the third nuclear arsenal in the world, with its strategic component directed specifically against the United States and potentially destroying the most powerful state in the world.

The status of the main US ally outside of NATO should contribute to the deepening of the Ukrainian-American strategic partnership in the critical military-technical sphere with a real program of assistance to Ukraine in its rearmament and restoration of the full cycle of domestic production of critical defense equipment using modern technologies.

4. Reaffirming Ukraine’s sovereign right, even as a neutral country, seeking to strengthen its own security and defense by concluding bilateral and multilateral regional international treaties, such as the Lublin Triangle or the Intermarium, to strengthen regional and global peace.

It is necessary to start with bilateral and trilateral contacts and create a group of countries within the European Union and NATO that should unite not only the leading European countries but also medium and small countries to protect common pan-European values of the collective security system.

Thus, a possible way to end the war in the center of Europe, de-occupy Ukrainian territories, restore the system of international law destroyed by the occupation of Crimea, and prevent the final destruction of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is a new comprehensive solution to security issues in the Euro-Atlantic area by developing a new joint Western strategy for Ukraine and Russia.

Source: https://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/smeshko/61cc88f72e5f8/