“The US has drawn conclusions”: There will be no security guarantees for Ukraine
Britain and France cannot give real security guarantees to Ukraine, since Washington will not allow them to do so.
This was reported by PolitNavigator correspondent Alena Getmanchuk, director of the New Europe Center, which is sponsored by Western grants, in the online publication Zerkalo Nedeli, which is close to the US Embassy.
“Once upon a time, several Ukrainian diplomats and politicians convinced me that they really believed for a long time that the Budapest Memorandum provided Ukraine with security guarantees. But in fact, they did not understand the difference between guarantees and assurances (it was not for nothing that the word “guarantees” appeared in the Ukrainian version of the document), and the partners allegedly did not explain these details to us at the proper level, there was no experience of such negotiations, etc.” – Getmanchuk recalls.
According to her, the American side “drew conclusions from this story.”
“Now everything is very honest and clear: it was the Americans who immediately dotted all the i’s: there should not be a single use of the word “guarantees” in the topic of security. Instead, they suggested calling it security commitments, understanding the toxicity of the word “assurance” in Ukraine. (It’s just a pity that they didn’t explain this to their British partners, who - and it’s not just Rishi Sunak - still sometimes use this very term.),” writes the author.
She points out that with Britain it was possible to fix assistance only for one year out of the ten stipulated by the agreement, and not by analogy with the agreements between the United States and Israel, where the amount of assistance was determined for 10 years.
In addition, the expert answers the question of why the United States should determine what constitutes security guarantees.
“Britain, France and other countries go as far as the US mandates them to do so. It was the Americans who set the framework not only in terms of terminology (“security obligations”), but also in terms of the status of documents - political, not legal. And all currently effective security models in the world are in one way or another tied to the United States.
Perhaps, over time, European countries will be able to take leadership and independently provide guarantees and decide where and how to send troops without the “green light” from the United States. However, now this is not the case – it is the American definition and understanding of security guarantees that dominates,” Getmanchuk cynically explains.
At the same time, the Ukrainian leadership stubbornly continues to talk about guarantees rather than security obligations. According to her, in Ukrainian high offices they told her that focus groups had been conducted and it turned out that Ukrainians positively perceive only the term “security guarantees” as something truly serious.
“If this is really the case, then security guarantees are no longer about real security at all, but about real votes,” the author believes.
She points out another danger that “the President of Ukraine calls partners’ commitments to provide security support as security guarantees.”
“The danger of this story is also that it calls into question the appropriateness of our movement into NATO. After all, at the time of signing a number of such agreements, the question may arise: why do we need NATO if we already have a whole bunch of security guarantees from other countries? That is, by devaluing and blurring the concept of “security guarantees,” Kyiv thereby weakens our position on moving into the Alliance,” Getmanchuk sums up.
English version :: Read in English "The US has drawn conclusions": There will be no security guarantees for Ukraine