Former US President Bill Clinton expressed regret over his role in Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament in the 1990s, suggesting that Russia might otherwise have missed a full-scale invasion.
According to “European Truth”Clinton said in an interview with the Irish broadcaster RTÉbroadcast on Tuesday.
The former US president, while talking about the peace process in Northern Ireland, touched on the topic of a full-scale war in Ukraine.
“I feel personally involved, because I made them (Ukraine – ed.) agree to give up nuclear weapons. And none of them believe that Russia would agree to this (invasion – ed.) if Ukraine still had their weapons,” he said.
Clinton said he knew that Vladimir Putin, unlike his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, would not have supported a counterpart to the Budapest Memorandum, a document that provided “security guarantees” for Kiev in exchange for renunciation of nuclear weapons.
“They (Ukrainians – ed.) were afraid to give it (nuclear weapons – ed.) because they thought that this was the only thing that protected them from expansionist Russia. Putin, when he saw an opportunity, violated the agreement and first seized Crimea. And I from “I feel terrible about this, because Ukraine is a very important country,” he stressed.
The former US president stressed that Western support for Ukraine must remain unwavering.
“I believe that what Mr. Putin did was very wrong, and I believe that Europe and the United States should continue to support Ukraine. There may come a time when the Ukrainian government believes that it can reach a peace agreement that it can live with, but I don’t think the rest of us should withdraw support,” he said.
As you know, in January 1994, Clinton signed a tripartite agreement with the then presidents of Russia Boris Yeltsin and Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk on the elimination of the arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons that remained on Ukrainian territory after the collapse of the USSR.
In December of that year, the United States also joined the Budapest Memorandum, which included Russian commitments to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
