What is the Budapest Memorandum?

On December 5, 1994, then-President Leonid Kuchma signed the International Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons with the leaders of the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit.

According to the treaty, Ukraine, which at the time had the third largest nuclear potential of any country in the world, pledged to become a non-nuclear weapon state. By 1996, it had fulfilled this condition and destroyed 2,000 strategic nuclear warheads inherited from the USSR.

For their part, the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom pledged to respect Ukraine's independence, sovereignty, and borders, and to refrain from the use of military force against it, as well as from economic pressure.