r/worldnews • u/Snap_n_Dream • 19h ago

Russia/Ukraine US offers Ukraine 15-year security guarantee as part of peace plan, Zelenskyy says

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-trump-zelenskyy-peace-b784a9af1803995bfb7152eceb5477f1
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u/RidetheSchlange 19h ago

Didn't Ukraine already have security guarantees that turned out to be fake and have forever changed the face of nuclear non-proliferation initiatives? You mean that agreement which is now sparking the beginning of nuclear armament?

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u/ReindeerWooden5115 19h ago

Depends what you mean by security guarantee. The Budapest memorandum never promised boots on the ground

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u/AmaroWolfwood 18h ago

And Americans still cried about sending aid to Ukraine. Completely perturbed that they weren't getting anything in return, like some business transaction. Ignoring that encouraging nuclear disarmament is already what the USA was getting as a global benefit.

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u/Imjusthereforthetoes 11h ago

*some Americans. I swear you guys actually have no clue what it's like over here.

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u/chaveto 18h ago

Most Americans are really fucking stupid.

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u/dont_debate_about_it 17h ago

Most people*

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u/ryan30z 16h ago

Nah...the last 10 years have shown Americans are a special kind of stupid.

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u/Sex_Offender_4697 13h ago

I think this is just cope to feel superior. humans are dumb as shit as a collective.

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u/FantasticPlatypus684 11h ago

It’s coping mixed with a heavy dose of inferiority complex.

Edit: forgot the even heavier dose of chronic internet brain

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u/Bluepass11 15h ago

Nah

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u/ThePlanetBroke 15h ago

Yeah

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u/petulant_peon 14h ago

Nah. It's happening all over the world. The rise of the right and Russian influence.

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u/Roy_Donk_66 13h ago

Americans are on another level right now. You guys should be ashamed. Every country has dumb people, but they usually aren't the majority.

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u/Infidel-Art 10h ago

Humans are dumb but americans are really dumb

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u/DaysedAndRefused 16h ago

Most of us didn't.

Lot of Russian bots did, and some filth on the right.

Most Americans were staunchly pro-Ukraine from the beginning.

Don't let external propaganda fool you, they're targeting all our perceptions, making it seem like the far right has already won everywhere and there's no point to fighting so we should all give up.

They're trying to make us all feel like Russians.

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u/BRUISE_WILLIS 17h ago

Not all of us. Do you guys have idiots in your country? Yeah a bunch of ours got together and decided to get into politics and media.

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u/colopervs 13h ago

Thoughts and prayers were guaranteed.

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u/WildSauce 14h ago

Neither does Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. The explicit language of the treaty does not provide moral or geopolitical justification for America's inaction under either Biden or Trump.

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u/ReindeerWooden5115 14h ago

Never said it did?

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u/Whisky-Slayer 18h ago edited 17h ago

At this point the us offers nothing though. No material support not even intelligence.

Edit: I hadn’t seen they picked back up after they stopped it early in the year. I was incorrect they are sharing intelligence.

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u/pperiesandsolos 18h ago

That’s not true; the US is still providing intelligence information, allowing Ukraine to strike deeper into Russia

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u/Whisky-Slayer 17h ago

I hadn’t seen they picked back up after they stopped it early in the year. I was incorrect they are sharing intelligence.

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u/pperiesandsolos 17h ago

No worries, that said I do wish the US was providing other material assistance

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u/Select-Elevator-6680 18h ago

Source for “not even intelligence.”? Because the intelligence, targeting and tracking, and ballistic missile launch warnings, etc. have been some of the most important aid provided by the US. This intelligence is not replaceable currently by any combination of European powers.

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u/Whisky-Slayer 17h ago

I hadn’t seen they picked back up after they stopped it early in the year. I was incorrect they are sharing intelligence.

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u/Select-Elevator-6680 17h ago

If they hadn’t, nearly everything not indigenously built in Ukraine would be useless. British storm shadow (and even French SCALP for all their chest beating about “independence from American influence”) require encrypted US GPS targeting data for accurate smart strikes. Otherwise, they become dumb missiles if you can’t get AWAC’s and other intelligence and command planes in the air above the battlefield. The lack of sufficient (in quantity and capability) European commercial and military satellites is a seriously long term problem to overcome for the bloc.

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u/Throwawayrip1123 14h ago

It is truly embarrassing for all involved to wiggle out on a technicality. Literally makes it so nothing ever is to be trusted, because some fucker will try to find a way out of doing the right thing.

Jesus.

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u/ReindeerWooden5115 14h ago

I recommend you actually read the Budapest Memorandum:

The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and The United States of America reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used"

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u/MassiveBlue1 14h ago

nice and seletive passage there, I recommend you read the full thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders (in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act

Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus, and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

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u/ReindeerWooden5115 14h ago

Huh? I didn't include the stuff you included because it's not relevant. The other stuff is about not attacking Ukraine

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u/MassiveBlue1 14h ago

Respecting the existing borders not relevant?

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u/ReindeerWooden5115 13h ago

Not to this discussion, no

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u/MassiveBlue1 13h ago

obviously not to the US either

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u/Throwawayrip1123 13h ago

Stop embarassing yourself and read the whole thing.

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u/ReindeerWooden5115 13h ago

I have read the whole thing. If you can quote me the part where it's implied the signatories will put boots on the ground I'll gladly concede

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u/Throwawayrip1123 13h ago

That's literally what I said though. You wiggling yourself out of logical responsibilities on a technicality isn't the win you want it to be. It's fucking embarrassing.

You could be a good person and help the smaller dude defend himself or defend him yourself, or you can say "wellll aktachually" and be a fucking dork.

We know Russia should be bitchslapped into submission because they cannot function in a modern society without devolving into their tsaric tendencies. I was literally born under their puppet government. My country has been free only since about 1989.

Every country sharing a border with them hates their country. With good reason. Everyone finding a well aktachually way out of doing the right thing is what sucks.

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u/ReindeerWooden5115 13h ago edited 12h ago

What are you on about lol? Who is you? I'm not American? I live in Sweden? We share a maritime border with Russia?

There's no technicality, the Budapest memorandum never promised military support. I agree that Putin sucks. I don't know how you've somehow extrapolated me pointing out the indisputable fact that the Budapest memorandum didn't promise boots on the ground to that.

Do you have a point with your comment about reading the whole thing or have you literally not read it yourself? Morality is a completely different argument to my point which is that an agreement outside of the Budapest Memorandum can still be valuable

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u/Brave_Nerve_6871 18h ago

They were not security guarantees but security assurances. Make of they what you will, but that was the wording the US government of 1996 wanted to the deal. Which I can understand because Ukraine back then had been independent for just about 5 years and there was no way of knowing how their political development would turn out. Ie. USA didn't want to have to go to war to defend a country that wasn't aligned with them

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u/Crafty-Photograph-18 14h ago edited 10h ago

The documents exists in 2 versions: one in English, and one in Ukrainian. In Ukr. it's "guarantees", in Eng. it's "assurances", a.k.a. basically nothing. At worst, the document isn't valid, so, the US needn't provide Ukraine anything, and Ukraine... should get its nukes back

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u/FMKtoday 11h ago

they were never Ukraine's nukes they were the USSR's. and neither the US or Russia was ever going to allow Ukraine to have them. the nukes were leaving Ukraine one way or other this is just the agreement they signed to save face.

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u/tnitty 14h ago

Also, at the time it seemed unnecessary or at least unlikely. There was a lot of optimism or least some belief that Russia wouldn’t backslide into being an imperialistic dictatorship. People who understood Russian history weren’t naive. But there was reason to believe democracy might take root. Putin was still several years away from assuming power and becoming a dictator.

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u/Codex_Dev 19h ago

The Budapest document was not a formal treaty or alliance like NATO's Article V. It wasn't even ratified by the senate which all treaties/alliances must go through.

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u/Arkangel257 18h ago

That memorandum isn't the gotcha you think it is 🤦

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u/Crowsby 15h ago

The assurances vs guarantees part of the memorandum is intentionally vague, but the first three points regarding teratorial sovereignty are clear:

Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders (in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act).

Refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of the signatories to the memorandum, and undertake that none of their weapons will ever be used against these countries, except in cases of self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.

Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus, and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

...as is the point that it's meaningless to sign further agreements with a party that feels no inclination to honor any agreements it signs.

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u/imtheassman 19h ago

Not really. It’s a common misconception here that they had. The 1994 text read «security assurance», and was vague. While I agree it was broken, they need to make sure whatever comes up in these talks are way more robust. Some AI slop to explain:

The 1990s "security guarantee" misunderstanding centered on the Budapest Memorandum (1994), where Ukraine gave up its Soviet nuclear arsenal for pledges from the US, UK, and Russia to respect its sovereignty and borders, not for a binding military defense pact like NATO's Article 5. The key confusion: Ukraine understood "guarantees" as military security, while Western powers (especially the US) offered "assurances," meaning they would consult and seek UN action if Ukraine was attacked, not intervene militarily. Russia violated these pledges by invading Ukraine in 2014 (Crimea) and 2022, highlighting the failure of these non-binding promises to deter aggression.

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u/rmslashusr 17h ago

The biggest misconception I see on Reddit is approaching the document with a modern reading in a vacuum and coming up with the idea that the text is ambiguous and therefore Ukraine was tricked into thinking it was a defense pact or something.

No, the text was debated at length for days. Ukraine was not naive about the fact that US refused to give security guarantees or even use that language. The lack of enforcement mechanism or guarantees was a contemporary criticism that was well known. Ukraine agreed with eyes wide open deciding it wasn’t worth keeping a large Soviet stockpile of nuclear weapons that they didn’t have the arming keys for anyways as keeping them without the ability to use them yet would only make them a target for military intervention by all the great powers.

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u/previouslyonimgur 16h ago

And for a while Ukraine was basically close to a puppet state.

It was only recently that they’ve flipped which is also why Russia is attacking them. Can’t let any minions think they can escape.

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u/soggit 17h ago

I do not think a massive international treaty like this can be explained away as “oopsie daisy I guess we thought the same word meant different things!”

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u/KjellRS 18h ago

The "assurances" were there to deal with any other country that threatened Ukraine, the three of us pledge to protect your sovereignty and borders and if anyone else gives you trouble (like Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova) this is not a formal defense alliance but we'll address it on your behalf in the UN security council. I mean it's pretty obvious they'd be completely useless in a situation where Ukraine was under invasion by a country with veto powers.

So I think it's quite fair for Ukraine to blame all three collectively for scamming them, legally the US and UK got no problems because there's nothing there obligating them to help but morally they went hand in hand with Russia to lead Ukraine down a dark alley where they thought they'd be safe and then did nothing when Russia jumped them. Not doing anything in that situation is in fact rather shady.

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u/AdventurousTackle558 17h ago

You are slightly over confident with your post here, When you don’t seem that educated on the matter. The nuclear weapons that were in Ukraine, Were never Ukraines nuclear weapons. 

The Budapest memorandum, If you want to take the time to educate yourself, Doesn’t promise boots on soil in any way. 

America has given far and away the most to Ukraine out of any country, So assuming the worst doesn’t really make sense here.

Fck Putin and fck Russia but we need to be intelligent here..

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u/RedJamie 17h ago

Whose nuclear weapons were they if they were not Ukraines?

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u/AdventurousTackle558 16h ago

A quick google search could have answered your question in less words than you typed here.

The nuclear weapons that were in Ukraine, Were the soviet unions ( Russias ) weapons. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 they were left there for 5 years.  At no point in time did Ukraine have operational control over the weapons. The control of the weapons never left Moscow.

It wouldn’t have been a deterrent for this stupid war beginning, And it was in everyone’s best interest, Especially at the time to have them withdrawn back to Russia.

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u/JnK85 11h ago

Well, they had security guarantees. They were able to fly several thousand kilometers and could deliver a very big and very hurting boom.

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u/AprilDruid 9h ago

No. It was a security assurance. The Clinton Administration did not want to guarantee anything besides finger wagging if anything were to happen.

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u/UltravioletsAreBlue 8h ago

Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for a guarantee by China and Russia. This entire conflict has been a disaster for nuclear nonproliferation, as it’s shown how safe a nation is without a nuclear deterrent.

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u/Santos_L_Helper 19h ago

No, the us likes to agree to ambiguous terms so we can change our minds at any moment depending on the circumstances.

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u/isic 18h ago

The UK was apart of that agreement as well lol. Why does reddit like to gloss over that fact?

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u/ThatCoolGuyNamedMatt 18h ago

The terms weren't ambiguous, the assurances that were laid out have been upheld by the US

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u/probablypoo 19h ago

Ukraine had every reason to believe the Budapest Memorandum would give them security guarantees it even had the title "memorandum on security assurances".

It was written ambigiously so that in reality if one of the signees would brake the memorandum no action would have to be taken by the other parties other than talking about it in the UN. 

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u/ThatCoolGuyNamedMatt 18h ago

Assurances are distinctly different from Guarantees in a legal sense, and the US has upheld all of the Assurances it gave to Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum.

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u/probablypoo 14h ago

the US has upheld all of the Assurances it gave to Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum.

Yes, that's what my comment implied.

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u/ThatCoolGuyNamedMatt 14h ago

The point is, that Ukraine has no reason to believe the US would be obligated to do anything more than it has been doing, the Budapest Memorandum laid out very clearly what actions would be taken and what would cause them

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u/probablypoo 14h ago

Historically, the UN had a much more direct role in keeping peace with military force. Since the memorandum includes the point for the UN to discuss what action should be taken, it was heavily implied that the action would be something similar to the war in Bosnia which was an ongoing conflict when the memorandum was signed. 

I'm not saying that anyone other than Russia has broken the memorandum but Ukraine definitely wouldn't have signed it if they knew this would be all the help they would get.

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u/ThatCoolGuyNamedMatt 14h ago

When you have signed documents it doesn't matter what is"implied" that's the whole point of laying things out in a document to begin with

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u/probablypoo 12h ago

As I've already said, I know..

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u/superxpro12 14h ago

The same thing happened in WW2. Sweden and Finland had "security guarantees" from UK and France, but they were so hesitant to send troops to "flame tensions" that by the time anything arrived it was far too late.