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What's hilarious about this is that the Tankies are kind of right, that Russia invading Ukraine is at least partially the US' fault. Of course, this is more of a "A broken clock is right twice per day" kind of thing. The US promised Ukraine that it would defend them from Russian aggression in order to get them to sign the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in 1994, which got them to destroy their nuclear stockpile. Until that point, Ukraine actually had the world's 3rd largest stockpile of nuclear weapons due to their Soviet heritage. Then, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, and the US did nothing. So Russia felt confident in invading once again in February of 2022. If the US had stuck to their word in the Budapest Memorandum, Russia would not have attempted to invade them again. But, alas, the US was too concerned with Russia's nuclear stockpile to do anything other than send Ukraine MREs back in 2014. So, here we are.
Personally I feel the US supplying Ukraine weapons fulfills the Budapest Memorandum. I feel we had an obligation to supply F-16s and Abrams earlier to guarantee security of their land.
I mean, better late than never. Still, I would have loved to see us doing what we're currently doing back in 2014. If we'd done that, Russia would probably not have invaded a second time.
Edit: Alternatively, we could have not induced Ukraine to destroy its nuclear stockpile, in which case Russia would never have invaded them in the first place. Of course, I'm torn on this one, as more nuclear weapons = more chance for the total annhiliation of all humanity. So, I'd prefer they remove their nukes, and we defend them as promised.
They couldn't use them, they could leverage them against either side but spinning up a nuclear program in the years of the fall of the ussr was very very unlikely given the cost, material expense and rarity of some of the necessary items.
supplying Ukraine weapons
Disposing old stockpiles in Ukraine.
Show me where it is written about "defend in the case of aggression". At least in the page you linked there is nothing about it.
What do you think "security assurances" means? The entire article is about this very thing and which countries agreed to provide these assurances.
It's even more interesting to look at it from the other side: if "security assurances" does not include "defend in the case of aggression" what else is there that could possibly qualify as a "security assurance"?! A warning sternly delivered with a strong finger wagging???!
You are entirely correct that the agreement itself did not obligate the US to take any action in the case of aggression against Ukraine unless it included the use of nuclear weapons. However, the main point of the agreement was that the US, the UK, and Russia all made a commitment to Ukraine to respect its independence, sovereignty, and territorial borders. A lot of diplomatic negotiations had to occur behind the scenes to make that happen. For Russia to sign this treaty, then 20 years later violate it without the other signatories even so much as lifting a finger in protest is pretty unconscionable.
But you are right. I worded my initial post poorly by implying that the US had obligations to defend Ukraine. In the legal sense, they did not. I will argue, however, that in a moral sense, they very much did.
The United States consistently backed Putin, and then the US didn't really anything when Russia invaded another former soviet republic as well in 2008.
Based and true