It has long been my contention that the Ukraine conflict is a tragedy that could have been avoided if we had had competent leadership in the White House in the past 35 years. Each presidential administration has had a choice either to work with the Russian Federation in friendly cooperation (or at least respect as a peer competitor) and help their economy recovery as we did with all Eastern European nations after the Cold War — or to view a rising Russian economy as a threat and do as much as possible to destabilize including taking many former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO. In 2022, this included a pledge to take Ukraine into NATO and there was even talk about Ukraine hosting nuclear missiles pointed at Russia. My stance is that the US should have now nothing to do with any military alliances with Ukraine. We should also cut all funding to the current war, which I believe the US had a big hand in provoking.
A friend of mine [who recently returned from a missions trip to Ukraine] recently disagreed with me and stated the US has an obligation to Ukraine to continue our funding of the war. This friend and I are aligned on some important policy issues. I usually agree with him as a person who uses sound biblical principles in his arguments. However, there is such a media fog on the issue of the Ukraine conflict that a lot of people have been led to conclusions based on false information.
For example, one of the bits of misinformation we often hear is that Ukraine should never have been forced to give up its nuclear weapons according to the Budapest Memorandum. This ignores that Ukraine never had nuclear weapons. This was the Soviet Union. Some of the staging areas were located in Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. It was unanimously agreed upon by the international community after the breakup of the Soviet Union that nuclear powers should not proliferate to four countries instead of one. The Russian Federation was named the nuclear successor state. All nuclear weapons were moved to the territory of the Russian Federation. But at no time did the government or military of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan possess the codes or personnel to launch nuclear weapons. Part of the agreement was that Russia would act as the defense umbrella of these countries in case of a nuclear attack. The signatories of the Budapest Memorandum also agreed on other points to limit aggression in the region. This applied to all the signatories, which included Great Britain and the United States. There are exceptions to this in line with the UN Charter’s recognition of the need for self-defense.
Here I post the entirety of our discussion. I’ve edited it for clarity on my part and have included some links to news media, video media, and images. Otherwise, I hope people learn something from the exchange and draw their own conclusions.
Materials: Full text of the Budapest Memorandum
BF:— Trump’s entire approach to this war is a violation of our agreements with Ukraine.
Jay Rogers:— What agreements?
BF:— The Budapest Memorandum for starters.
Jay Rogers:— Before I engage you in this, a few questions.
Have you read the Budapest Memorandum in its entirety?
Do you know if there are any exceptions causes?
Are you actually telling me you want to send my tax money to Ukraine to kill thousands of people in a war?
BF:— Yes. I have read the Budapest Memorandum in its entirety. Have you? If you have, you should know that there are no exceptions which apply at this time. For example, the exception that allows the use of nuclear weapons in self-defense against a nuclear strike does not apply right now. The Budapest Memorandum requires the US to recognize Ukrainian sovereignty within the entire extent of their 1994 borders.
In addition to the Budapest Memorandum, there is also the U.S.-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership which specifically obligated the US to assist Ukraine in their defensive war against Russia including a commitment to hold Russia accountable for war crimes and a promise to never recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Jay Rogers:— It’s important in any negotiation process to at least understand your partner’s/opponent’s point of view.
Russia has long insisted that the Western alliance [the US and Britain] violated the Budapest Memorandum first. At the time [when the Memorandum was signed in 1994], Ukraine’s constitution called for a non-aligned, neutral, non-bloc state. This meant no NATO membership. That was changed later [at the behest of NATO in 2014] and Russia always said that it would consider NATO membership a violation of the agreement of non-aggression in the Budapest Memorandum. Russia considers the following actions by the US and Britain to be a violation of the agreement.
Euromaidan Coup: Russia considers the Western support of the violent overthrow of the Kyiv government in 2014 to be an act of aggression in Ukraine.
NATO Expansion: Russia contends that the eastward expansion of NATO, despite over two dozen written assurances to the contrary given to Soviet President Gorbachev and Russian President Yeltsin, created a security dilemma for Russia and undermined the spirit of the Budapest Memorandum.
Interference in Ukraine: Russia accuses the West of interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs, including supporting “anti-Russia propaganda” and the “heroization of Nazi criminals.”
Security Assurances: The Budapest Memorandum provided security assurances to Ukraine in exchange for its denuclearization. Russia argues that the West’s actions, particularly its support for Ukraine’s perceived anti-Russian policies, constitute a breach of these assurances.
Violation of Sovereignty: Russia claims that the West’s actions have undermined Ukraine’s sovereignty and dragged it into a confrontation with Russia, further justifying its intervention in Ukraine. I can go on if you would like. The point is that you should not look only at one point of view [the NATO Western alliance view] as though it’s a fact. These conflicts are rarely that simple.
For example, Article 3 of the Budapest Memorandum states the following.
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.
Do I need to give examples of that? Have you ever heard of Hunter and Joe Biden’s connection to the oligarch who controlled Ukraine’s premier gas company Burisma? That is for starters. It goes much deeper.
See: The Bidens’ Influence Peddling Timeline
I also think the language is clear that as soon as any of the signatories act aggressively toward any of the other parties against Ukraine, or using Ukraine as a proxy against the others, then they violated the Budapest Memorandum. The United States definitely did this first and I can give you several dozen examples of that.
I don’t know why you would disagree. The United States violates nearly every treaty that it makes for peace. This is a fact and a lesson of history. Do you not understand, that the US/NATO, not Russia, is the overwhelming aggressor in the current Ukraine war? But the underlying issue is I can’t understand how you of all people would want me to send my tax money to fund a war in Ukraine, one that is already lost and has already taken the lives of hundreds thousands! How do you justify that stance? It seems very inconsistent with the rest of your political philosophy, which I usually agree with.
BF:— Can you show which clauses of the Budapest Memorandum have been violated by the US and where the Memorandum states that such violations give Russia the right to ignore the Memorandum?
As for how I justify spending American dollars to support Ukraine, let me direct you to the Bible where God places such a strong emphasis on keeping a nation’s promises that He plagued Israel with three years of famine when Saul broke Israel’s promise to the Gibeonites.
Jay Rogers:— Absolutely. The Memorandum guarantees non-aggression toward Ukraine, and also explicitly states that any of the signatories cannot act aggressively toward each other. It is nonsensical to say that only Russia cannot act aggressively toward Ukraine, but that the United States, Great Britain, or Ukraine can act aggressively toward Russia. The memorandum applies to all the signatories, not just to Russia and Ukraine. I hope you see that? The Memorandum provides for …
— Respecting the signatories’ independence and sovereignty.
— Refraining from the threat or use of force against their territorial integrity or political independence.
— Not using any of their weapons against these countries, except in cases of self-defense or in accordance with the UN Charter.
— Avoiding economic coercion.
It would be invalidated if Ukraine acted aggressively toward Russia, or vice versa, or if any of the signatories acted aggressively toward either party — Russia, Ukraine, Great Britain, or America — within Ukraine — or using Ukraine as a proxy — or as the Russian say, “as a battering ram.”
You said earlier that the Memorandum contains no exceptions. This is false. The countries can act in self-defense. This is what Russia has been doing in Crimea and Donbas from 2014 until the present. Collective self-defense is in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter. If the United States was allowed to act in Yugoslavia, a conflict that did not pose any threat to our security, then Russia certainly had a right to act in self-defense in alliance with the Donbas republics and Crimea.
Ambiguity: While the memorandum includes these commitments, the specific nature of the response in case of violation was left deliberately ambiguous.
Russian violation: Russia’s actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine are widely considered violations of the Budapest Memorandum, specifically concerning respect for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. This is the widely accepted view of the West.
Western violation: Russia points out that prior to the annexation of Crimea in 2014, as far back as 2005, the CIA, and numerous western NGOs operated within Ukraine, to provoke acts of aggression toward pro-Russian Ukrainians. American run CIA bases and biolabs were set up close to the Russian border at least as far back as 2005 with the purpose of aggression toward Russia. There are other examples but that is one flagrant violation that was established by Victoria Nuland’s testimony before Congress.
- The two dozen or more biolabs in Ukraine have been funded and accessed by CIA for many years.] The United States has admitted that it runs numerous bio-weapons labs all over the world, which are prohibited on US soil.
- The US openly admitted that it runs 336 biological laboratories in 30 countries around the world, including 26 in Ukraine. However, the contracts suggest that the US has signed contracts with 49 countries, way more than it had admitted.
- A New York Times article reported on a network of CIA bases near the Russian border.
- Russia also points out that pro-Russian bloggers, politicians, and numerous civilians have been targeted for assassination and many have been jailed. These are numerous other violations are considered acts of aggression.
Victoria Nuland admitted before a Senate committee that biolabs containing dangerous pathogens exist in Ukraine.
No explicit guarantee of intervention: The memorandum does not mandate military intervention by the other signatories in the event of aggression against Ukraine.
It’s nonsensical to say that the memorandum prohibits only Russia from acting aggressively toward Ukraine, but not the other nations toward Russia. There are dozens of examples of how both the Ukrainian government and its Western sponsors acted aggressively toward Russia in Ukraine. Support of the war with American tax dollars is unconscionable. The United States and its sponsored NGOs in the region instigated the conflict. The United States has also conducted, or instigated through proxy, numerous wars throughout the world, none of these have been required through treaties or promises.
An important clarification: I didn’t say that Russia ignored the Memorandum. I’m saying that Russia is following the Memorandum.
BF:— Can you quote the specific clauses of the Memorandum that say what you are asserting?
Jay Rogers:— I already quoted exactly what it says. The exception literally says the following.
“… 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” (emphasis mine).
You wrote that there are no exceptions. This is false. The self-defense clause here was used by the United States and NATO for the war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s even though there was no treaty between these countries and NATO. The United States and Germany argued that since they signed an agreement with Kosovo, they could enter into collective self-defense, which is specifically what Article 51 of the UN Charter says. Russia is using the same rationale in their agreement with LPR and DPR. They recognized them as nations, and then signed a security agreement and entered into a collective self-defense pact.
Regarding Yugoslavia:
THE MILITARY INTERVENTION by the nineteen member North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Kosovo, a province of Serbia in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, was the first of its kind undertaken by the alliance. Under the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, NATO was formed as a regional security organization. With its mission to act in a defensive capacity to protect its members from external aggression, under the treaty the parties specifically agreed that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently … if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area (Legal Implications of NATOs Armed Intervention in Kosovo).
The US and NATO did the same thing in Kosovo that Russia has done in the Lugansk and Donetsk Republics [once they a=had declared independence from Ukraine]. Now the Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, has had the audacity to say that Russia cannot redraw the borders of Ukraine. This is nonsense. Countries do that all the time and they use the UN Charter to justify it. We created South Sudan using a similar rationale. What Russia is doing is sauce for the goose.
There is also Paragraph 3 which says that “the Russian Federation, Great Britain and the United States affirm to refrain from using economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.”1
When the United States participated in the Orange Revolution in 2004, and then the violent Euro-Maidan Revolution in 2014, that was subverting Ukraine to the economic interest of the UK and the US.
[I often use the analogy of January 6, 2021. What if politicians from China, Russia, or Iran came to Washington D.C. and stood up on the Capitol building steps calling for the overthrow of the US government?]
The democratically elected president of Ukraine [Viktor Yanukovych] faced impeachment, but there were not enough votes in the Ukrainian Rada. Instead the US helped the protesters resort to an illegal coup. The president had even agreed to submit to an election in the fall, but Victoria Nuland and other United States operatives pushed the coup instead.
When the president of Ukraine was put out of power by a coup, no one who signed the Budapest Memorandum came to his aid. Instead Great Britain and the US celebrated it. The president [Yanukovych] fled to the pro-Russian city of Kharkov and then to Crimea. Russia assisted him. He never left Ukrainian territory, as some in the West alleged, and was still the rightful president of Ukraine.
You can have any opinion in your mind about the coup that you want. But the hard fact of the matter is it was a violation of the Memorandum by the US and the UK because they assisted the overthrow of the Ukrainian government for their own economic interests.
There is also Paragraph 3 of the Budapest Memorandum which required the United States and Great Britain to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine should become a victim of an active aggression. That is, to seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they “should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used” (emphasis mine). [Note here that any act of aggression can be considered a violation, not only a nuclear attack.]
Instead of doing something in concert with the UN, the United States and Britain began to arm radical ultra-nationalist independent militias who located to Eastern Ukraine. These militias operated without restraint bombing and killing civilians in the Donbas region. [This was widely criticized by the Western media in 2014 and 2015 until an anti-Russian bias began to take hold. See this article from 2014: Ukraine: Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians.
If you notice, all the clauses are reciprocal. They don’t apply only specifically to Russian aggression. So if the United States acted aggressively in any way against Russia in Ukraine, then this was the first violation of the Budapest Memorandum.
You can agree with this or not. If you follow a narrative, then you will adjust the facts to fit it. But this is the argument that Russia has been making since the very beginning. These are the “root causes” of the current conflict that Putin and other Russian officials speak of when they say that there can be no ceasefire until these are addressed. The Russian view is that they tried for eight years [2014 to 2022] to negotiate for peace, but the West was intent on using Ukraine as a battering ram to weaken Russia. The plan was always to goad to Russia into conflicts due to ethnic uprisings and color revolutions in nations on its borders. This included the CIA inflaming ethnic conflicts in Chechnya and Georgia, and even planned color revolutions in countries like Belarus and Kazakhstan, which failed.
Until the West admits responsibility for the illegal activity it carried on within Ukraine, then there can be no peace settlement. There are people in the Trump administration who understand that. But the neocons and neoliberal globalists refuse to see it. The irony is that the BRICS nations are corralling the Global South into an economic alliance which already outpaces the G7. In time, there will be a dramatic shift in the global order toward a multipolar system. Then the Forever Wars of the NeoCons will be negated. They won’t have economic leverage over countries, and they will not be able to afford to finance these wars any longer as their economies’ growth declines in comparison to the economies of the emerging nations outside the West.
The war in Ukraine is not a war between Russia and Ukraine or even NATO. Russia is representing the multipolar world, while the neocons and neoliberals in the West represent unipolar hegemony. The neocons use the Forever War to assert United States’ dominance, while the neoliberals work with the EU and NATO in order to use economic coercion through controlling the banking and exchange systems. There is actually very little difference between the two groups. [As far as military policy goes, both are the“War Party” with very few exceptions].
Many of the neocons ran over to the Democratic Party when Obama defeated John McCain in 2008. Then neocons Nuland, Blinken, Sullivan and others served in the Obama administration for eight years, who simply continued their deep state influence over Trump through the Russia collusion hoax, and his impeachment over the phone call with Zelenskyy in which he was trying to expose the Bidens’ corruption and collusion with the Ukrainian oligarchs. Then they entered into the Biden White House and controlled him as well.
[See: Thanks to Biden, the War Party is back.
The United States had no business interfering in the economic affairs of Ukraine to push them toward its own interests. The Budapest Memorandum forbids that specifically, but they ignored it.
BF:— I’m sorry, but I just don’t see anything in the Memorandum that supports your claims. You seem to be doing exactly what you have accused me of doing. You seem to be adjusting the facts to fit a narrative. For example, you claim that America used economic coercion against Ukraine and that this justifies Russia’s use of military force, but you seem to be confusing economic involvement with economic coercion. In international law, “economic coercion” usually refers to things like economic sanctions against a nation. Plus, there is nothing in the Memorandum that says Russia can go to war against Ukraine even if America were to use economic coercion, and there is nothing in the Memorandum to suggest that America should stop recognizing the 1994 borders of Ukraine if Russia decides to recognize different borders.
Jay Rogers:— The memorandum specifically refers to an exception contained in the UN Charter article 51. This is known as the doctrine of “collective self-defense.” When the Kyiv government attacked separatists in Donbas in 2014, Russia had every right to sign a security agreement with them and help defend them. The Budapest Memorandum cannot override the provisions of the UN Charter. As I already showed you, this was the same rationale that the NATO forces used to invade Serbia and defend Kosovo. Whether it was wise or right to do that morally is a different story, but it was legal according to the UN charter, just as it was legal for Russia to recognize LPR and DPR and sign a security agreement with them. Even Donald Trump called it “genius” at the time. It was sauce for the goose. You can still be against Russia’s decision to invade, but you can’t call it an illegal invasion according to NATO’s own doctrine of collective self-defense.
Further, now this war is already lost. There is no option except escalating into World War III against a nuclear power, or greatly harming the economy of the European Union and America if they continue to drag on a war of attrition that Ukraine is slowly losing at great cost. The best option for Trump is to cut funding and walk away. Nothing in the Budapest Memorandum actually requires the United States to fight a war against Russia on behalf of Ukraine. Nothing in the NATO charter does either even if Ukraine was part of NATO. Article 5 in the NATO Charter does not force any country to go to war.
The 2014 Ukraine civil war and the 2022 conflict (or the “Special Military Operation” — SMO) was provoked by the West, and that was a huge mistake. Ukraine should never have been offered NATO membership. Zelenskyy should never have proclaimed that Ukraine should get nuclear weapons in January 2022. When the Budapest Memorandum was signed, Ukraine had it in its Constitution that it must remain neutral and non-aligned. Then Ukraine changed their Constitution after the Euromaidan Revolution in 2014.2 The violation of that understanding with Russia that they would remain neutral is another reason to consider this an aggressive act against Russia. And it wasn’t as though Russia did not warn about this for many years before finally taking action in the form of the 2022 invasion.
Again … you can believe that it’s not justified on other grounds, but the invasion certainly was provoked and it was well understood that this is what would happen if Ukraine were to be pushed to join NATO and get nuclear weapons. There is no way that Putin and the Russian Federation was going to allow that to happen, any more than Kennedy was going to allow the Soviets to set up bases with nuclear weapons in Cuba. This is a war that the West wanted. That’s the only logical conclusion that you can come to when you look at all the factors and actions. The West did “A” understanding full well that “B” would occur.
There was a huge miscalculation and it’s probably going to result in revolutions in many European countries and the dissolution of the European Union. Much like how communism collapsed in the Soviet Union and 1991, now Liberal socialism is collapsing in Europe. It’s not just a loss for Ukraine, but it’s a huge loss for the EU and NATO. They either will cease to exist or they will become irrelevant. The changing global order toward multipolarity is going to affect the United States as well. Our political leaders and business oligarchs will no longer be able to act as though the US is the hegemon of the world. We will probably see violence in this country very soon too. This will happen when we are no longer able to sell our debt. This will come as a shock to many and it is uncertain how a divided culture they will channel its anger. This has already been happening gradually, and at some point it will happen all of a sudden. And it iss going to be a great opportunity for Christians to be able to rebuild a Christian civilization in our country.
The United States has been playing an economic coercion is a game with Russia since 2008.
- Provoke an ethnic conflict or border dispute.
- When Russia responds as they certainly will and should,
- Hit them with sanctions.
The neocons and neoliberal globalists thought that the US could do that because Russia’s economy was weak and they would be damaged to the point of not being able to recover. But that was a big miscalculation too.
Final Thoughts
Jay Rogers:— Thank you for letting me comment on your page without censorship. I know you didn’t invite me to. I agree with you on most things. I just think that you’re wrong about this one. My sense is that you’re more affected by your heart than your head. If you had gone [to Ukraine] to talk to people who have been shelled for the past 11 years in Donbas, who have also lost loved ones including small children on the Russian side, you might have come to a different conclusion as to why Russia entered the war. I don’t see either side as being wrong. I mainly blame the United States for fanning into flames a violent situation that did not exist in Ukraine prior to 2014. In all my trips to both Ukraine and Russia, I never saw anything like this division. And it was incomprehensible to me that it could occur.
Of course, the US has provoked conflicts all over the world for decades. So it’s not completely shocking.
1 The 2013 Belarus sanctions indicated that the United States never considered the Budapest Memorandum “legally binding” on itself, but only on the former Soviet Republics. In 2013, the government of Belarus complained that American sanctions against it were in breach of Article 3 of the Memorandum. The US government responded that its sanctions were targeted at combating human rights violations and other illicit activities of the government of Belarus and not the population of Belarus, and also noted that the Memorandum is “not legally binding”.
2 Ukraine’s Constitution was significantly altered in 2014 when the Parliament reinstated the 2004 amendments, shifting power back to Parliament from the President. This constitutional change was part of the political crisis resolution following the Euromaidan protests and predates the later amendment in 2019 that enshrined NATO membership as a strategic goal.
your_ip_is_blacklisted_by sbl.spamhaus.org