'Ukraine peace deal will hinge on security guarantees – but Kyiv has been there before'

The chances of an easily negotiated lasting deal to end the Ukraine war remain slim, warns Jennifer Mathers, senior lecturer in international politics at Aberystwyth University

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WHETHER the various peace plans now under discussion bring an end to Russia's war against Ukraine will depend largely on security guarantees. But securing an agreement between Ukraine, its allies and Russia about how Ukraine's future security will be assured may prove to be the most difficult part of any peace deal.

Ukraine already has bitter experience of what happens when a security guarantee turns out to be no guarantee at all.

Back in 1994, Ukraine reluctantly put its faith in the vague assurances of the Budapest Memorandum. According to the terms of that agreement, Ukraine gave up the Soviet-era nuclear weapons stationed on its territory and pledged to sign the nonproliferation treaty and remain a nonnuclear country.

In exchange, Russia, Britain and the US promised to respect the independence, sovereignty and borders of Ukraine and not to use force against that country.

But the only commitment that Moscow, London and Washington made was to seek action by the UN security council to support Ukraine - and then only if Ukraine were attacked or threatened with attack by nuclear weapons. The memorandum made no mention of what should happen if Ukraine faced an attack using conventional forces.

As Ukraine's then president Leonid Kuchma remarked after the deal was done: “If tomorrow Russia goes into Crimea, no-one will raise an eyebrow.”

Twenty years later, Kuchma’s prediction came true. In 2014, Russian troops occupied strategic points in Crimea. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, then engineered a widely discredited referendum on the region’s future status and claimed it as part of the territory of the Russian Federation.

Russia went on to arm, fund and direct local militias in eastern Ukraine and covertly sent its own soldiers to fight with them to undermine Ukraine's sovereignty.