i just know i’m gonna end up pulling an all-nighter. the exam’s at 8:30 am and i still have so much to go through. i think i’ll rely on adrenaline and nerves to keep me awake for this osce ;)
this thing has been weighing me down for a year and finally i can be free. also the examiner told me he was proud of me and saw how much better i’ve gotten, at which point i almost cried
schizos in stem baby!!! we’re not dangerous, we’re not crazy, we save lives!!!
As peace talks between Ukraine and Russia gain traction, Western leaders insist on enforceable security guarantees for Ukraine. “Article 5-l
It's idiotic to trust Putin to adhere to any new agreement regarding Ukraine. He has already violated seven or eight such agreements. The most famous of the agreements which Putin blatantly violated is the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
Just to refresh memories, this is the first of six points in the Budapest Memorandum.
^^^ without a doubt, quite unambiguous.
As diplomatic efforts to end Russia's war against Ukraine have intensified in recent days, Kyiv and its backers have sought to ram home a key point: lasting peace is only possible with credible, enforceable security guarantees for Ukraine, not merely symbolic pledges or paper agreements.
This is rooted in Russia's record of ignoring treaty pledges to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity and independence.
"A security guarantee can also be something like the Budapest Memorandum of 1994," Clifford May of the U.S.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies told RFE/RL's Current Time.
"Russia signed it. America signed it. Britain signed it. And it said, we will all respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine. That security guarantee was not literally worth the paper it was written on," May said.
The memorandum is one of at least six international agreements that Russia's aggression in Ukraine has violated. These include a 2003 border treaty signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, the 2010 Kharkiv agreements enabling Russia to maintain its naval base in Crimea, and the 2014-15 Minsk Accords aimed at ending combat in the Donbas.
They actually didn't mention the Budapest Memorandum in this table from the article.
That list also doesn't mention the 1975 Helsinki Accords and its 1991 successor the OSCE Accord. If you're counting, that makes eight agreements and treaties violated by Vladimir Putin.
All this makes Ukraine understandably wary of agreeing to a peace deal with Russia without having credible security guarantees in place.
No kidding!
When you deal with an untrustworthy lout like Putin, you need ironclad guarantees, not mere promises, to back you up.
In the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in return for territorial security. Ukraine could say that Russia's violation of the Budapest Memo renders it null and void and that Kyiv is entitled to produce its own nukes or house those from allied countries on its soil.
💬 "Russia should either start respecting the rules of the OSCE or be excluded from the organization," says Polish FM Sikorski at the OSCE Ministerial Council session in Malta.
