NATO in exchange for a ceasefire: there seems to be a consensus in the US and the EU that Ukraine's neutrality can be “sold” to Putin

On December 5, exactly 30 years ago, Ukraine, Russia, the USA and Great Britain signed the infamous Budapest Memorandum. Kyiv joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, voluntarily giving up the third nuclear potential in the world. Instead, he received only $700 million from the United States, nuclear power plants from the Russian Federation, and security “guarantees” that never worked.

In 2014, after Russia's occupation of Crimea and the beginning of the intervention in Donbas, Ukraine tried three times to convene consultations of the guarantor states of the Budapest Memorandum, but without success. Washington and London claimed that the Budapest memorandum lacked a mechanism for the implementation of these “guarantees”. Therefore, perhaps the Ukrainian authorities should have used the Budapest Memorandum back in 2003 during the events around Tuzla Island in order to get rid of vain hopes.

Everything became…