The Betrayal of Ukraine
As the world is gripped by the unfolding events in Ukraine, seeing Russian forces close airspace in Kharkiv and move west of the Donbass towards Kyiv, many have begun the pointing of fingers on what has caused this military aggression.
While Russian state propaganda makes it clear that this is a "military exercise" to "denazilize Ukraine" and the political class of the United States is busy trying to throw all the blame on Trump or Biden, we must look further to the root of this cause.
The moment Ukraine became an independent state at the foot of the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian leadership never saw the nation as anything other than rightful Russian territory. President Putin going as far as to say on Monday that Ukraine has no right to statehood as it is a land that was built by and for Bolshiveks, a century ago.
So with this as the political foundations of how the Russian Federation would see Ukraine, it would have been fundamental for Ukraine to be able to defend themselves from military aggression such as today's. At the aforementioned time of Ukrainian independence during the early 1990s, Ukraine had exactly what was required for maintaining defense against Russia- one of the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons in the world, at the time.
As we witnessed for decades prior between the US and USSR, maintaining nuclear weapons fostered the fear of mutually shared destruction and thus, was the strongest deterrent against direct military attack and/or invasion. It was the fear of offensive nuclear repercussions that kept the Soviets and to a significant extent, the United States in line, during the Cold War. Even today, North Korea's harboring of nuclear weapons- along with rumours of Iran's nuclear fission- stands as the strongest factor against a full-on invasion of those autocracies. A Ukraine with offensive nuclear capabilities- or atleast a fraction of what they maintained at the cusp of independence- would have been enough to stave off Russian military intervention such as in Crimea and now, today.
The fear of future military conflict was on the mind of the West during the 1990s and it was in 1994, under the strong influence of the United States and the United Kingdom, the government of Ukraine became party to the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. What this agreement did was join Ukraine (and a couple other former Soviet states such as Kazakhstan) to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. As adherent to this, Ukraine had to destroy their stockpile and decommission all necessary infrastructure to achieve offensive nuclear capabilities. In return for this, Ukraine and other soviet states signed on received a "word" in written format from Russia; that they would never threaten the sovereignty of any of these states nor take aggressive military actions against them, unprovoked.
The reality is that international law, including this agreement, is only as strong as the willingness of the party states to keep them, and the strength of said states to defy them knowing imminent recourse. Therefore, Russia, being a perpetually powerful, rich rogue actor with the tangible intent on reclaiming as much of the old Soviet Union as possible, would have inevitably violated this pact. As they spent the last twenty years under Vladimir Putin violating the sovereignty of states such as Georgia and Belarus, and considering the relatively easy occupation of Ukraine's Crimea region as of 2014, it was a matter of time before the Kremlin came for the Donbass and ultimately, all of Ukraine.
Now today, with Ukraine as a sitting duck without any nuclear deterrent, at the mercy of a superior Russian military force and no substantial aid coming from NATO, the US and UK is busy pretending that their actions of administrations prior have not caused the helplessness of the Ukrainian people. Although I often sympathize with the isolationists that can be found in the West, this is not one of those times as atonement is required today for the disastrous policies of yesteryear. The world's third largest nuclear power was reduced to a state dependent on US loans and EU promises, all in return for a paper promise from a patient burgeoning Russian Federation.
Ultimately, this situation is more complex than you and I may believe or understand but undoubtedly, the nation that was once the food basket of the Soviet Union and today is a strong partner in Neon and Natural gas to the West, requires much more than verbal uplifting
