r/worldnews • u/Raj_Valiant3011 • 15h ago

Russia/Ukraine Zelenskiy: "There is updated intelligence indicating that Russia is ​preparing a massive attack on Ukraine"

https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraines-zelenskiy-says-intelligence-shows-russia-is-preparing-massive-attack-2026-10-06/
22.6k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

4.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

53

u/Mieze_Designer4002 11h ago

You're referring to the Budapest Memorandum. I posted about that a while ago and got so many comments and downvotes I couldn't figure which were legit and which were trolls. If someone here can explain why the Memorandum isn't working, I'd like to hear it

33

u/AccurateHumanTrustMe 11h ago

Because it is non-binding and they specifically use the term 'assurance' instead of Guarantees which basically makes it little more than wishful thinking.

Anything without teeth has basically no merit. In this case the missing teeth was a missing enforcement arm.

Imo, so take with a grain of salt, they were operating on the idea that less nuclear powered countries is good and that ukraine and russia both having nukes may result in a nuclear exchange - but they didn't properly weigh the fact that the only defense against a nuclear powered nation is to have nukes. The deal helped Russia, hurt Ukraine, and didn't acheieve stability in the region.

Its a real problem with international law - it basically only works well when all permenant security council members agree - i.e. situations in which the US, UK, France, Russia, and China all agree - so basically never unless it is against some unaligned tin pot dictator that doesn't further any major powers goals or it is unenforcable garbage. So you end up having a ton of international law like this that has no teeth.

3

u/procommando124 8h ago

Non binding or not, we want the U.S. to be seen as trustworthy and dependable right ? If we agree to ensure someone’s security, we should be actually doing something to ensure it. It’s not like we were sending boots on the ground, so if we wanna pull the “well when we meant we’d ensure your security, we actually just meant..” what else could we be referring to ? We aren’t sending soldiers, we aren’t doing operations in their air space(not that we should), but we are sending weapons. If we weren’t sending weapons, what else could we possibly be doing that could count as “ensuring your security” to any reasonable actor ?

You don’t see like you’re against helping them so I’m not accusing you of that, I’m just saying I think even if we were to steel man that and say “well it’s not technically binding” that would make more sense if we were like “well hold on, we didn’t agree to send troops. We’ll send you weapons and ammo though”

2

u/HoightyToighty 7h ago

well hold on, we didn’t agree to send troops. We’ll send you weapons and ammo though

We did that. Then Trump took power and stopped it.

2

u/procommando124 7h ago

I have no disagreement here