A brief history of broken Russian promises to Ukraine
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Monday marks the third anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and the Kremlin marked the weekend with the largest drone attack of the war. President Trump says Vladimir Putin wants “peace," but Ukrainians have hard experience about what such a promise means in practice.
The anniversary is a good moment to recall the post-Cold War history of Russia’s broken promises. They began with the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 amid the illusion of the “end of history." Ukraine yielded its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from the U.S., U.K. and Russia.
Moscow explicitly promised to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and refrain from economic coercion. So much for that, and here’s a trail of Russia’s other broken commitments. • In 2003 Russia began building a dam on the tiny Ukrainian island Tuzla without warning or permission from Kyiv.
Ukraine responded to this territorial violation by deploying troops, and the crisis diffused only after Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma struck a compromise with Mr. Putin on terms favorable to Moscow. • After Tuzla, Ukraine sought to deepen political and economic ties with Western Europe.
Moscow resorted to energy extortion to draw Kyiv into its orbit and weaponized its trade ties with Ukraine. In 2013 Moscow blocked Ukrainian exports at the border while offering financing for the Ukrainian government as an inducement for closer ties. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych succumbed to this economic coercion and withdrew from a political association and free-trade agreement with the European Union in November 2013.
That prompted mass protests in Ukraine. Mr. Yanukovych abdicated and fled to Russia in February
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