Statement of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine in regard to 20th anniversary of signing the Budapest Memorandum
On 5
December Great Britain, the Russian Federation and the United States of America
signed in Budapest the Memorandum on providing security assurances in regard to
Ukraine’s signing the NPT as the non-nuclear state.
Countries–signatories
of the Budapest Memorandum took obligations to sustain from the military threat
against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.
During 20
years of participation in NPT, Ukraine was thoroughly
implementing all articles of Budapest Memorandum and was also taking an active
stand in negotiations in the sphere of nuclear nonproliferation. The example of
continuous position of our state in this sphere particularly has become the
proclamation on Washington nuclear summit in April 2010 of the decision to
refuse from the use of highly enriched uranium.
Along with
that, in 2014 Russian Federation violated taken obligations, particularly,
occupied the sovereign part of Ukraine (Autonomic Republic of Crimea and the
City of Sevastopol) and launched the military aggression against Ukraine.
Therefore,
there in not only doubt concerning the security assurances by nuclear states
regarding the specific state, but the dangerous precedent is created, when the
state, which guaranteed the safety to Ukraine in reply to the refusal of
nuclear weapon barefacedly violated its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Such acts
aren’t only the open aggression against Ukraine, they
are the threat to the whole international system of nuclear safety and disrupt
the regime of nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction as a whole.
In the day
of 20th anniversary of Budapest memorandum we call upon the states –
guarantors of the safety of Ukraine to perform urgent steps in order to restore
the territorial integrity, sovereignty and peace in Ukraine and also to start
practical discussion of issues of legally binding security assurances to the
states, which took or are planning to take the historical decision regarding
the refusal of nuclear weapons.