The Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksandr Turchynov called Budapest Memorandum "just a piece of paper" that no one was even going to implement.
"Unfortunately, it must be stated that the agreements, in particular the Budapest Memorandum, which guarantee us territorial integrity and security of our borders - all these agreements have proved to be a piece of plain paper that no one was going to observe," Turchinov said 29 September during a visit to the presentation of new weapons at a Kyiv tank plant.
"Moreover, Europe is again demonstrating signs of the "Munich Syndrome ", when trying to appease the aggressor, instead of using a hard-stop", he went on.
The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances refers to three identical political agreements signed in Budapest, Hungary on 5 December 1994, providing security assurances by its signatories relating to Belarus', Kazakhstan's and Ukraine's accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The Memorandum was originally signed by three nuclear powers, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom. China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents
However, in 2014 one of the signatory countries of the memorandum annexed Crimea, and then sent troops into the territory of Donbass. Meanwhile, Russia considers itself in compliance of the Budapest accord as it does not threaten Ukraine to use nuclear weapons.
At the same time, the efforts of the US and UK as signatories to the deal to protect the territorial integrity of Ukraine proved to be fairly weak. In particular, Ukraine was denied lethal weapons.