Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is blackmailing the West with words about Kiev’s withdrawal from the Budapest agreement, political analyst Dmitry Solonnikov believes.
“Ukraine is beginning to blackmail the United States and the European Union with the fact that it will become a catalyst for changing global international agreements,” Solonnikov said on February 20 in an interview with the TV channel REN TV.
According to the expert, Kiev is simply seeking money in exchange for refusing to produce weapons of mass destruction.
He concluded that Zelensky’s statements about withdrawing from the nuclear agreement are a serious challenge for Ukraine’s European and American partners.
The expert drew attention to the fact that Ukraine, the closest ally of the West, began to talk about the production of nuclear weapons against the backdrop of European and US concern about the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea.
On February 19, Zelensky announced at the Munich Conference his intention to initiate a summit of the countries participating in the Budapest Memorandum. At the same time, the Ukrainian leader allowed the country to withdraw from the Budapest Nuclear Weapons Agreement, which established the non-nuclear status of the state.
According to him, if the negotiations and consultations fail again or, as a result of them, no concrete decisions are made on security guarantees for Ukraine, then the Ukrainian side will have the right to believe that the Budapest Agreement does not work, and all package decisions of 1994 and the obligations of the guarantor countries will be put in doubt.
On the same day, German Ambassador to Ukraine Anka Feldhusen stated that the Budapest Memorandum is not a guarantee of Ukraine’s renunciation of nuclear weapons due to the ambiguous legal status of the document.
The Budapest Memorandum was signed by Ukraine, the USA, Great Britain and the Russian Federation on December 5, 1994. The document provided for guarantees of the security and territorial integrity of Ukraine in exchange for Kiev’s renunciation of nuclear weapons. In return, the above countries pledged to respect the sovereignty of Ukraine and not to use these weapons against the state.
#Political #scientist #called #Zelenskys #words #withdrawing #nuclear #memorandum #blackmail