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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

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When discussing Budapest Memorandum it is worth noting that it was signed in 1994 by Leonid Kravchuk who was a Soviet-Ukrainian leader. Ukraine at that time, while having some historical reasons to distrust Russia, was in perfectly good terms with them and in the heads of the ex-Soviet leaders an invasion by USA or UK, while also remote, may have seemed more likely than by Russia. Like all ex-Soviet countries, Ukraine was also completely bankrupt and money to maintain the nuclear weapons was going to be a significant drain to the newly created country. It is also worth noting that it was the country of freshly experienced Chernobyl-disaster and anything nuclear did not ring positively with the population.

While Ukraine had no ambitions at the time to become "western", by signing the agreement they definitely planed to enter the world stage as a partner of both the west and Russia and not as adversary.

With hindsight this agreement seems very naive and bad for Ukraine but the alternative of maintaining the nuclear status had many drawbacks, including international isolation with significant economic costs.