Head of State Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that in order to end the war, Ukraine must be provided with truly reliable security guarantees, not just "on paper", because Kyiv has bitter experience when the guarantors of the Budapest Memorandum "didn't give a damn" about Ukraine.
Points of attention
- Zelenskyy named the reason for the failure of the Budapest Memorandum in the context of the war.
- The President pointed out the lack of real security guarantees for Ukraine from its allies.
- Zelenskyy mentioned Merkel, as well as how she blocked Ukraine's path to NATO.
Zelensky stressed that he is not going to trust empty promises
The Head of State draws attention to the fact that the Budapest Memorandum contained security guarantees for Ukraine, but they did not save it from several Russian invasions.
Initially, the three most important guarantors of security for Ukraine, three strategic friends and partners of Ukraine — the USA, Russia, Britain. France and China joined. There were 5 states… Now we understand that these are not security guarantees. It was written "assurances"… These are the largest states, these are the nuclear five. Now we should find all these people who came up with all this and just put them in prison…
Volodymyr Zelenskyy
President of Ukraine
According to him, immediately after part of Donbas and Crimea were occupied, Ukraine sent letters 3 times over several years to all security guarantors, all members of the Budapest Memorandum.
According to the document, Kyiv could count on urgent consultations, but no one even came to them.
Ukraine holds consultations if its territorial integrity is violated. And everyone should be in consultation. Everyone must come. Everyone must meet urgently — USA, Britain, Russia. France, China.Did anyone come, you ask? No. Did anyone reply to these letters, official letters? Did anyone conduct consultations? No. And why not? They didn't give a f**k. This is understandable in Russian, right? That as Russia didn't give a damn, neither did all the other security guarantors of the Budapest Memorandum. None of them gave a damn about this country, these people, these security guarantees
Nothing has changed in 2022
Volodymyr Zelenskyy emphasized that in February 2022, when the Russian Federation launched a full-scale invasion, letters were also sent, but this time no one responded to them.
In addition, the head of state admitted that he considers the story of security guarantees for Ukraine to be a "train with waste paper", the second car of which was the Minsk Agreements.
The USA was no longer here. Then there was Obama, he simply didn't care what was happening to Ukraine and where it was.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy
President of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian leader also recalled that former German Chancellor Angela Merkel "forced everyone not to give Ukraine an invitation to NATO" at the 2008 Bucharest summit.
