Like the remnants of nuclear weaponry that Ukraine displays in a former base-turned-museum, the security assurances promised to the country by Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States are relics of the past.
The specter of that shattered 1994 Budapest Memorandum hung over negotiations in Saudi Arabia between Russian and American officials – the first such meeting of their delegations to discuss the Ukraine war since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in Feb. 2022.
France called a second emergency session on Wednesday in Paris for European and world leaders to discuss the war in Ukraine – and how to respond to U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin holding exclusionary talks.
Four principles were agreed upon between Moscow and Washington starting with quickly repairing diplomatic relations, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said after four hours of meetings and lunch on Tuesday with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and other officials. "For us to be able to continue to move down this road, we need to have diplomatic facilities that are operating and functioning normally," he said.
The other three principles are to appoint a high-level negotiating team, focus on the geopolitical and economic benefits of post-war cooperation and stay engaged so the talks are productive, said Rubio.
"There has to be concessions made by all sides. We’re not going to predetermine what those are," he said. "And when you talk about an enduring and sustainable end to the conflict, it means one that’s acceptable to everyone involved in it. And that obviously includes Ukraine, but also our partners in Europe, and of course the Russian side as well."
The talks in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, followed on a phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin last week. After the talks, Trump offered no criticism of Russia, or Putin, but instead mocked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “grossly incompetent” leader who “should have never started" the war and "should have made a deal" with Russia already – ignoring that it was Russia that had invaded Ukraine in a major escalation of the war that began in 2014.
With European leaders excluded, French President Emmanuel Macron held an emergency session in Paris on Monday to assess the situation. European leaders, including officials from Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom, disagreed over whether to send troops to Ukraine. The U.K. offered to put "boots on the ground," unlike Germany, Poland and Spain, which expressed reluctance.
"The discussion is completely premature, and it is the wrong time to have it," said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose nation holds a federal election this month.
Finland’s President Alexander Stubb told the Munich Security Conference on Sunday that Europe should try to tip the balance in favor of Ukraine before the Russia-U.S. talks. "This is a moment when we need to rearm Ukraine and put maximum pressure on Russia, which means sanctions, which means frozen assets, so that Ukraine begins these negotiations from a position of strength,” he said on the conference's last day.
“Don’t underestimate Trump as a negotiator. I genuinely believe that Putin is baffled and afraid what might be coming from there,” said Stubb. “Right now, the ball is in our court here in Europe. We need to convince the Americans where’s the value added, and then get back into the table.”
Zelenskyy said in Munich a day earlier that his nation must be part of any negotiations over its future. "Ukraine will never accept deals made behind our backs without our involvement. And the same rule should apply to all of Europe," he said. "If we’re left out of negotiations about our own future, then we all lose."
He also rejected a Trump administration proposal to provide U.S. military aid in exchange for giving U.S. companies half of Ukraine's minerals. Trump has said it would take $500 billion in Ukrainian minerals to repay U.S. support for the war – a figure more than seven times greater than the U.S. State Department cited last month. It said the U.S. has given $69.2 billion in military aid since Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
Along with Putin's ambition for a vastly greater sphere of influence, security and control in Europe, the Trump administration's "America First" transactional policy has added to a sense of urgency among Europeans that they must strengthen their own self-defense.
Trump's newly installed U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said America can no longer be “the primary guarantor of security in Europe" and is no longer “primarily focused” on European security – and that Ukraine must concede territory and it cannot join NATO.
When it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine held the third biggest nuclear arsenal in the world: an estimated 1,900 strategic warheads, 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 44 strategic bombers.
The Commonwealth of Independent States, representing former Soviet republics, signed the 1991 Minsk Agreement, named for the Belarusian capital, agreeing to put Russia in charge of all nuclear armaments.
Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan signed the 1992 Lisbon Protocol agreeing to return nuclear weapons to Russia. Ukraine pushed for more assurances, leading to the Budapest Memorandum two years later.
Ukraine committed to full disarmament – handing over its entire nuclear arsenal to Russia for dismantlement with U.S. assistance – in exchange for economic support and firm security assurances from Russia, the U.K., and the U.S., three of the world's nine nuclear-armed countries.
In Dec. 1994, on the margins of an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe conference at Budapest, Hungary, Bill Clinton, Leonid Kuchma, John Major and Boris Yeltsin signed a deal for Ukraine to become a non-nuclear armed country under the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a cornerstone of nuclear arms control.
Under the Budapest Memorandum, Russia promised to give compensation for the highly-enriched uranium in the warheads that could be used as fuel for nuclear reactors. The United States pledged to cover the costs of eliminating the intercontinental ballistic missiles, silos and bombers.
All sides committed "to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine" and "refrain from the threat or use of force" against the country. In Dec. 2024, at an OSCE meeting at Malta, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha lamented the deal's broken promises.
"The expectations were high. Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear arsenal. In exchange we expected respect for our territorial integrity and the right to freely choose our future," he said. "The Budapest Memorandum failed. The Russian dictatorship started a war of aggression against Ukraine."
Here's a timeline of more key Ukraine and nuclear security events:
- 1994 to 2009: Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty requires Russia and the U.S. to reduce their strategic nuclear weapons.
- 2009: Russia and the U.S. jointly confirm their security assurances to Ukraine would remain valid after START expired.
- Feb. 2011: The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, takes effect, replacing START with an extensive verification program.
- March 2014: Russia annexes Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, supports a separatist insurrection in eastern Luhansk and Donetsk provinces.
- Sept. 2014: Minsk I agreement between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists calls for a ceasefire.
- Feb. 2015: Minsk II agreement between Russia, Ukraine, OSCE, and leaders of two pro-Russian separatist regions calls for a ceasefire.
- 2018: Russia and the U.S. meet New START's deadline to cut forces.
- Late 2021: Russia posts 150,000 military personnel near Ukraine.
- Feb. 24, 2022: Russia launches a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
- 2023: Putin says Russia will end participation in New START by no longer allowing NATO countries to inspect its nuclear arsenal.
- Feb. 2025: NATO leader Mark Rutte says "we need a durable a lasting peace, not a Minsk III. We cannot allow President Putin to win."
This story has been updated with additional details.
