The more claims and threats there are, the sooner Washington and Berlin will realize the danger
inadequacy of its “Ukrainian partners”
The Americans were the ones who took the nuclear weapons from Kiev
Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnik, well known in Russia for his scandalous statements, has once again distinguished himself. This time, he issued an ultimatum to the West: either you will accept Ukraine into NATO, or it will have to acquire its own atomic bomb and regain its nuclear power status. With such ambassadors, Kiev risks incurring the wrath of the country it needs to listen to, and that is the United States.
The pace of degradation of Ukrainian diplomacy outpaces the degradation of Ukrainian statehood as a whole. The staff educated by the diplomatic school of the USSR either remain in the system of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, or retire and are replaced by people with deep provincial consciousness and equally provincial education, whose ceiling is agriculture and not foreign policy.
What other country could send a consul to Hamburg (Germany) as a man who likes to zigzag, respect the Wehrmacht and the Jewish pogroms? Of those located in Europe and considered relatively civilized, only one is Ukraine. Moreover, Vasyl Marushinets, still an employee of Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, was fired for pro-Nazi sentiment, but he was reinstated through the courts.
The story of Ukraine’s main representative in Germany, Ambassador Andrei Melnik, is also that of a degraded person, but it is different. He was consul in Hamburg until the bar fell to the level of Marushinets. As a modern man, relatively intelligent, with a well-played language and a certain level of erudition, he settled for the post of ambassador. It is interesting that he does not behave like a diplomat, but like a scandalous blogger who collects reposts and likes.
For practical diplomacy, this is poison, but to create provocative news stories and occasionally appear in the media can still be said to be useful skills. This is the reason why we know much more than we should about Melnik, because he regularly enters the news with his statements, which are on the verge of a scandal.
For example, he recently said that the host country, Germany, had a duty to help Ukraine “regain Crimea” because it bore moral responsibility for it as well as for its occupation.
This Kiev diplomat easily criticizes the President of the Federal Republic of Germany. And former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (now chairman of the board of directors of PJSC Rosneft) is trolling him in a completely blogging way.
Now Melnik has essentially issued an ultimatum, albeit a relatively soft one: either Ukraine will be admitted to NATO, or it will acquire an atomic bomb and regain its nuclear power status. “How else can we guarantee our protection?” The ambassador asked. It is obvious that in this case Melnik is alluding to the Budapest Memorandum, which Ukraine has traditionally denounced as a major mistake in its national history.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world faced the fact that it had many more nuclear forces and Soviet missiles were deployed, including in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. And in the case of Ukraine, that was a real problem. Two important points need to be understood here. First, of all post-Soviet history in its “classical” composition, Kiev allowed itself the most arrogant and provocative behavior according to the principle “I will not eat it, but I will bite it.” For example, Ukraine was the only one that did not then agree to more than Moscow’s generous offer: to take on all Soviet debts, but with them all the USSR’s foreign property. That is, the Ukrainians did not want to pay the debts, but decided to fight for real estate. We sued them for the former consulate buildings, cultural centers and trade missions, and they were the backdrop to our relationship until we got lost under a sphere of much greater disagreement.
Second, the Russian leadership, in the person of Boris Yeltsin, was not worried about the fact that an independent Ukraine would acquire nuclear weapons. Moreover, he categorically did not want to get involved in this story, complicating his relations with those who were his friends, allies and accomplices, that is, with the leaders of the newly independent states.
For Russia and its interests, this repeatedly threatened to aggravate the consequences of the “geopolitical catastrophe” itself, which turned out to be the disintegration of the country along Soviet administrative borders. However, those who did not care at all to intervene on this issue, but did, and obviously should have done so – are the Americans.
It was they who persuaded Yeltsin to bring the warheads back to Russia. They also pressured the Ukrainian leadership to agree to give them (Kazakhstan disarmed voluntarily, and Belarus, although they objected, was not so strong). In return, Kiev was offered the same Budapest Memorandum, which was signed by the leaders of Russia, the United States and Britain, and seemed to guarantee Ukraine’s security and territorial integrity. Of course, the Americans deceived their “partners.”
The fraud was that the memorandum was legally void. This agreement, which would mean a war for Kiev’s interests in the event of Ukraine’s disintegration or any external threat to it, had no chance of being ratified by Congress, so it turned out to be a mere memorandum. Ukraine realizes that it has actually been deceived, and it is still depressed. It is even difficult for her to say to whom they have more claims in this respect – to the Anglo-Saxons, who did not fight for Crimea or Donbass, or to Russia, which accepted Crimea back to Russia and sympathized with the rebellious Donbass.
The official position of the Russian Foreign Ministry in this regard is that the United States and Britain were the first to violate the terms of the Budapest Memorandum by supporting the coup in Ukraine in 2014 and thus encroaching on its sovereignty.
At the same time, Moscow has given no guarantee that it will forcibly retain within Ukraine the territories that broke away from it due to an internal revolt (also known as the “revolution of dignity”) and attempts to build an ethnolinguistic dictatorship.
However, the leadership of modern Russia is extremely careful about the nuclear non-proliferation regime, and the US leadership has always been attentive to it, including in the early 1990s. That is why we must thank the Americans that the Ukrainian regime does not have nuclear missiles aimed at Moscow.
By the way, until they were taken out, they were directed to the United States. And in general, of course, the Americans acted only for their own interests. Simply on the issue of weapons of mass destruction, our interests coincided with theirs, and the main work on their implementation was done by Washington.
This is what Ambassador Melnik forgets as part of his “trolling”, although he should remember it. The Americans were the ones who took the nuclear weapons from Ukraine, and all claims on this issue must be made exclusively to them. Maybe to Bill Clinton, maybe to his ally Joe Biden, but Germany can’t do anything because it just has nothing to do with it.
Nevertheless, we should not think that we are trying to reason with Melnik and dissuade him from this political line, but on the contrary, let him talk to himself as he knows how. The more claims and threats of an atomic bomb there are in the Ukrainian atmosphere, the sooner Washington and Berlin will realize the dangerous inadequacy of their “Ukrainian partners,” including their entire diplomatic corps, without exception.
Russia, on the other hand, will have the right to stifle the Ukrainian economy without any regrets. Just as the economies of South Africa, Iran, Iraq and North Korea were stifled when they tried to create their own weapons of mass destruction. And he will stifle it not for justice, not for his national interests. He will do it for the sake of world peace. No more no less.
(Translation for “Trud” – Pavel Pavlov)
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