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In an interview with a Hungarian YouTube channel, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti pointed out, the Kremlin’s top diplomat said Moscow does not consider its full-scale invasion of Ukraine to be a violation of the Budapest Memorandum. “The Memorandum states that Ukraine, like other former Soviet republics that gave up nuclear weapons, would receive guarantees from nuclear powers to non-nuclear states,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. “That’s it. These guarantees say that nuclear weapons will not be used against non-nuclear states that are parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.” He went on to counter that Ukraine, in fact, violated a separate Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) accord by allegedly violating minority rights (referring to Russian loyalists in eastern Ukraine, and standards of democracy and freedom of speech. The December 1994 Memorandum on Security Assurances signed in Budapest states that the signatories (including the US, Russia and UK) “reaffirm their commitment to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine,” and “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.” In the same YouTube interview, speaking in English, Lavrov added that in terms of peace initiatives the White House has not proposed “any new meetings or conversations” between the US and Russia since their phone call on Monday. “And I did not raise the issue, because the entire initiative was coming from the United States. And we would be ready to move as the Americans feel comfortable for themselves,” he added. Citing a lack of success in diplomatic efforts, US President Donald Trump said that he had canceled his scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest, Hungary. “We cancelled the meeting with President Putin,” Trump said to reporters at the White House last week. “It just didn’t feel right to me… We didn’t seem to have a chance of reaching our destination. So I called it off, but we’ll do it later,” Trump said.
