Ukraine won’t accept security guarantees substituting NATO membership

Ukraine will refuse any kind of security guarantees substituting NATO membership, according to a Foreign Ministry statement on Dec. 3.

“Having the bitter experience of the Budapest Memorandum behind us, we will not settle for any alternatives, surrogates, or substitutes for Ukraine’s full membership in NATO,” the statement said just two days before the 30th anniversary of the memorandum’s signing.

NATO foreign ministers are meeting in Brussels between Dec. 3 and 4, with Ukraine also participating. Kyiv urged the allies to issue a membership invitation during the meeting, but Reuters reported that there is a lack of consensus on the matter.

Ukraine gave up its Soviet-era nuclear weapon arsenal in the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 in exchange for the recognition of its borders and security guarantees by the U.S. and Russia, among others.

The ministry’s statement called upon “the U.S. and Great Britain, which signed the Budapest Memorandum,… France and China, which joined it,” and “all the states participating in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons” to support Ukraine’s invitation to NATO to counteract Russian blackmail attempts.

Last week, President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested ending the “hot phase” of war along Ukraine’s eastern front in exchange for NATO membership, not immediately including occupied territories.

In separate comments on a potential invite on Dec. 1, Zelensky said that the alliance’s Article 5 collective defense principle may not apply to Ukrainian territories facing active combat if Ukraine were to join NATO.

Several allies remain opposed to Ukraine’s quick accession to the alliance, including Germany, Slovakia, and Hungary, according to earlier reporting and statements.

Why Ukraine doesn’t have nuclear weapons

When the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic adopted the Declaration of Sovereignty in July 1990 to gain greater rights and freedoms within the Soviet Union, ridding the country of its nuclear weapons was one of its top priorities. Ukraine had just suffered enormously from the Chornobyl nuclear pow…

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