Oleh Belokolos: We Must Avoid Budapest Memorandum Mistakes

We need clear guarantees to be announced.

The G7 are to come to an agreement on the principles of security guarantees for Ukraine today, July 12. The heads of states will do it in the framework of the NATO Summit in Vilnius. They say that the guarantees for Ukraine will be "historic".

What terms will be acceptable for Kyiv? Charter97.org asked Oleh Belokolos, an expert on foreign and security policy of the Maidan of Foreign Affairs Foundation, the former adviser of the Ukrainian Embassy in Canada and Kenya.

– To be honest, I also wonder what wording they will use. I am quite familiar with diplomacy and I always prefer to carefully study the wordings in the documents. That is where, in general, everything is located. Let's recall the infamous Budapest Memorandum, which is still causing diversity: Are there security guarantees or something else? This is the first point.

Wordings are important for another reason. Actually, security guarantees is a term used in journalism. Please do not be offended. This is not a diplomatic term, such a concept does not exist in international politics, it was invented for convenience. There is a classic option - an agreement on assistance when country A undertakes to provide assistance to country B, or an agreement on mutual assistance between countries A and B. Details and methods of assistance are specified in the agreements. This can be conditionally called security guarantees, although in fact only an agreement on assistance or mutual assistance defines security guarantees. It is impossible to say what these guarantees will be until the text of the agreement is published. But I know that negotiations went on literally until the very last day.

– The final communique also provides a demand for the Lukashenka regime to stop malicious activities against neighbors. What does this mean for Lukashenka?

Yes, I heard that was mentioned. How effective this is and what will be behind this formulation, we will find out in the near future. However, what they said and what I heard from the comments about the possible deployment of Russian nuclear weapons on the territory of Belarus: all this activity does not pass by NATO, given the hype and the way the question itself is posed in this context.

We will know soon about further developments, because the Russian Federation escalates the issue.

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