Significant progress is being made on the issue of security guarantees for Ukraine, says President Zelenskyy. No further questions, except: What are “safety guarantees” – and what do they bring?
He can inspire confidence. Because nothing can be said with certainty these days. Volodymyr Zelenskyy does it anyway.
He is sure that Vladimir Putin with his campaign will fail. That the Future of Ukraine in the EU located. Of the full reconstruction of the country succeed. And even he himself, the Ukrainian wartime president and Russia’s number one public enemy, is safe. “I’m with my people. That’s the best protection for me,” he said shortly after the beginning of the war. “When Ukraine is with you, you feel safe.”
Great progress has now been made, Zelenskyj is also convinced of that. “We are negotiating with the world’s leading nations to give Ukraine confidence in security for decades to come,” he said on Wednesday evening in his daily video address.
Accordingly, efforts to obtain international security guarantees for Ukraine are making significant progress. “It is now the first time in the history of our state that such guarantees are recorded,” Zelenskyy continued. And not in any memoranda or unclear formulations, “but concrete guarantees”. These are “not only legally valid, but also formulated in such a way that it is clear: What exactly, who specifically and how specifically (Ukraine) is guaranteed.”
Selenskyj has not yet been able to provide details, but what the President expects from the planned agreements has become more than clear: Ukraine wants concrete commitments. This persistence is no accident. Because if there is anything else that can be said with certainty, it is this: Security guarantees of all things do not guarantee security.
In fact, everything was settled long ago
That, at least, is a bitter lesson of recent history for Ukraine. The US, Britain and Russia traded with Ukraine, as well as Belarus and Kazakhstan in 1994 “Budapest Memorandum” out of. Essentially, it provided for the ex-Soviet states to hand over their nuclear bombs to Russia in exchange for a guarantee of their territorial integrity.
Everyone adhered to this until 2014, when Russia violated the treaty in which it annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. The Crimean crisis was followed by the unrest in eastern Ukraine and then the de facto war there. Since the end of February 2022, the Russian military has been openly attacking its neighbor – even though the USA and Great Britain issued security guarantees in favor of the country in 1994, as did China and France in a separate agreement.
In short: the status of Ukraine has long since been regulated and protected in a binding manner – unlike the way Kremlin boss Putin in particular is trying to sell it to the (his) public.
Bizarrely, it was also Russia with his insisting on security guarantees started the war in Ukraine. At the end of December, President Putin demanded from the USA including the written guaranteethat Ukraine will not join NATO. The background to this is the goal of joining NATO expressed in the Ukrainian constitution.
Although the defense alliance had no intention of absorbing Ukraine in the foreseeable future, nevertheless, Putin babbled about a “betrayal” at his country. According to his reading, the West had broken the agreements on NATO’s eastward expansion (although this was never binding).
As a last resort, on February 24, the Russian army launched its offensive against Ukraine. One of Moscow’s demands for an end to hostilities is Kiev’s clear commitment to political neutrality, i.e. turning away from the goal of joining NATO, for which the country is now seeking international security guarantees.
What does Ukraine want – and what will it get?
Ukraine is apparently aiming for a kind of promise of assistance, similar to Article 5 of NATO. “We want an international mechanism for security guarantees, where the guarantor states would act in accordance with Article 5 of NATO and even in an even stricter form,” said Ukrainian negotiator David Arachamia quoted after peace talks in Istanbul at the end of March.
According to this, the permanent UN Security Council members, as well as other countries such as Turkey or Germany, are possible guarantor states for Kyiv. The Federal Republic is ready for this: “If guarantees are needed, then Germany will be there and give guarantees”, said Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock at the end of March.
But what good would the guarantees be in an emergency? “Such a security guarantee that Ukraine would be defended in the event of renewed Russian military aggression would be a NATO alliance guarantee through the back door,” Gerhard Mangott told the Editorial network Germany (RND) to consider. In other words: Should Russia attack Ukraine again, the security guarantors would have to step in.
According to the Russia expert and political scientist from the University of Innsbruck, neither the USA nor most other NATO countries wanted to give Ukraine this defense commitment before the war. “I have my doubts as to whether they are ready now and want to risk an armed conflict with Russia.”
Military expert Gustav Gressel also expressed skepticism as to how much security these guarantees would really bring. “Security guarantees never replace a strong Ukrainian army, they can only be agreed as a supplement,” he told RND.
The only thing that is certain so far is that Ukraine is expecting concrete commitments – which go beyond the vague definition of the declared goal: “Security guarantees are political but not legally binding declarations by the nuclear powers towards non-nuclear states”, as the German Society for the United Nations explains the term.
However, there are also cases in history where security guarantees have proven themselves, according to military expert Gressel on the RND. “The United States has defended non-aligned states in the past, like Austria in 1956,” he said. At that time, Russia had crushed the popular uprising in Hungary. “The USA has assured that it will not leave a Soviet invasion unanswered and has accordingly put its own forces on increased readiness.”
That could make Selenskyj confident.