Promises of a security guarantee sound familiar – but hollowpublished at 18:50 GMT
Will Vernon
BBC News
Image source, ReutersUkrainian servicemen are seen fighting on the front line with Russia
According to published drafts of the peace plan, Kyiv would
receive reliable security guarantees from the US and Europe if it agrees to the
deal.
While there are few details, it appears that this would be modelled on
Nato’s Article 5 – meaning Western forces could respond militarily if Russia
were to carry out another armed attack on Ukraine.
For many Ukrainians, such promises will sound familiar –
and, perhaps, rather hollow.
In 1994, following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Ukraine
agreed to give up its nuclear weapons stockpiles in exchange for security
guarantees from the UK, US, France – and, most notably, Russia. This was known
as the Budapest Memorandum.
Fast forward to 2015, there was the Minsk Agreements,
brokered by France and Germany and signed between Russia and Ukraine after
Moscow’s first invasion of its neighbour.
Under the accords, Kyiv was supposed
to regain control over all of its state border and hold elections in those
areas of the Donbas that Russian forces had seized.
It never happened, and
President Zelensky later described the agreements as a “trap”. Seven years later, Russia staged a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.