Russia-Ukraine Peace Talks: Appeasement History in Danger of Repeating

The year is 2025, or is it 1994? Once again, the United States is meeting with Russia to discuss Ukrainian disarmament. Once again, Ukraine will be forced to subjugate itself in the name of global stability and peace. And once again, that peace will surely fail thanks to Russian oath-breaking.

Three decades ago, Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum, surrendering its nuclear arsenal (then the third largest in the world) in exchange for security assurances from Russia. Time and time again, Russia has flouted those assurances. Yet, according to Steve Witkoff (U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East), the United States is working hard this year to get the Ukrainian government to sign another similarly structured and similarly ill-destined agreement: the Istanbul Protocol, which would leave “Ukraine helpless in the face of future Russian threats or aggression,” according to the Institute for the Study of War.

DM

About the Author

Dean Meller

Dean Meller is a Falls Church Fellow at Advancing American Freedom. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

About the Author

John Shelton

John Shelton (MDiv, Duke University; BA, University of Virginia) is the policy director for Advancing American Freedom.

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The year is 2025, or is it 1994? Once again, the United States is meeting with Russia to discuss Ukrainian disarmament. Once again, Ukraine will be forced to subjugate itself in the name of global stability and peace. And once again, that peace will surely fail thanks to Russian oath-breaking.

Three decades ago, Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum, surrendering its nuclear arsenal (then the third largest in the world) in exchange for security assurances from Russia. Time and time again, Russia has flouted those assurances. Yet, according to Steve Witkoff (U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East), the United States is working hard this year to get the Ukrainian government to sign another similarly structured and similarly ill-destined agreement: the Istanbul Protocol, which would leave “Ukraine helpless in the face of future Russian threats or aggression,” according to the Institute for the Study of War.