Russia fully complies with its obligations under the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances of 1994, which provided Ukraine with security guarantees after its accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th November, 2018) Russia fully complies with its obligations under the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances of 1994, which provided Ukraine with security guarantees after its accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday.On Sunday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called on the signatories to the Budapest Memorandum to help Kiev in countering Russia's alleged aggression in light of the detention of three Ukrainian ships for entering Russian territorial waters near the Kerch Strait east of Crimea. According to Lavrov, the Budapest Memorandum primarily deals with Ukraine's renunciation of nuclear weapons.
"[The Budapest memorandum] indeed contains an obligation of all nuclear-weapon signatories to the memorandum not to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, it also includes a commitment to respects all the principles of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) without exception. And we remain fully committed to these principles," Lavrov indicated.
The Russian foreign minister, in particular, recalled that the Budapest Memorandum prohibited change of power in the way it happened in Ukraine in 2014.
"And the OSCE principles, which Ukraine adopted by signing the Budapest Memorandum, categorically prohibit changes of power in the way that it was in Kiev in February 2014," Lavrov indicated.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine inherited a considerable nuclear arsenal. In 1994, Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States signed the Budapest Memorandum, under which Kiev agreed to destroy its nuclear arsenal in exchange of security assurance of the other signatories to the document.
