Political and legal assessment of the Budapest Memorandum: From Ukraine’s renunciation of nuclear weapons to the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula

Abstract

The current state of Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, which resulted in a violation of territorial integrity and sovereignty, makes this study relevant. The Budapest Memorandum’s contents, its importance for Ukraine, and an examination of the post-bipolar international communications system are the work’s primary objectives. The scholarly article’s methodological techniques aid in illuminating the theoretical and practical facets of these procedures, enabling a political and legal evaluation of the Budapest Memorandum and its effects on Ukrainian politics. The methods of deduction, induction, synthesis, logical analysis, dialectical methodological approach, and others should be included in this category of methodological approaches. The Budapest Memorandum’s features and its function in maintaining nuclear security were identified during the study, as was the effect of Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament in the context of the Crimean Peninsula’s annexation. Other factors that allowed for a political and legal evaluation of the subject under investigation included the foreign policies of nations that guaranteed Ukraine’s national security but failed to carry out their commitments. The results of the study helped to establish the effectiveness of the Memorandum in the context of nuclear safety guarantees and provide recommendations on their maintenance, which will help in improving the mechanism of international security. By evaluating the political and legal effectiveness of the Budapest Memorandum’s nuclear security guarantees for Ukraine, this study provides recommendations to improve the mechanism of international security commitments and prevent future violations of territorial sovereignty.

Keywords

• foreign policy
• nuclear weapons
• norms of international law
• act of aggression
• ratification