Gudziak: Russia’s war on Ukraine undermines global, nuclear security

Russia’s war on Ukraine undermines global security, while standing to encourage nuclear proliferation, Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia told OSV News.

“Besides causing barbaric bloodshed, untold devastation of civilian infrastructure, the displacement of 14 million forced migrants, the invasion of Ukraine — a blatant violation of international law — profoundly undermines the global effort for nuclear arms reduction,” said the archbishop in a Dec. 5 email from Rome regarding the 30th anniversary of the Budapest Memorandum.

The agreement, signed in Budapest, Hungary, Dec. 5, 1994, stipulated that Ukraine — having gained its independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991 — voluntarily relinquish what was then the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal. The weapons had been amassed in Ukraine while that country was still under Soviet rule.

In exchange, the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia pledged security assurances for Ukraine as it acceded to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in 1970 and to which 191 states are now party. Described by the United Nations as “the cornerstone of the global nuclear non-proliferation regime” and an “essential foundation” for nuclear disarmament, the treaty aims to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, further the goal of complete disarmament, and promote cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

However, Russia violated its Budapest Memorandum pledge through its partial and then full-scale invasions of Ukraine, launched in 2014 and 2022 respectively. Russia’s aggression has been declared a genocide in two joint reports from the New Lines Institute and the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights.

“The Russian invasion can provoke further nuclear proliferation because the security guarantees issued to Ukraine have not held,” Archbishop Gudziak said. “If a state that disarmed its nuclear weapons can be successfully invaded, in the future no nuclear country will ever consider such disarmament. Quite the opposite. Nations will seek to develop nuclear arsenals as deterrents against conquest.”

Throughout the full-scale invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kremlin state media personalities have routinely threatened the possibility of engaging in nuclear attacks on Ukraine, the U.S. and European nations. On Nov. 19, Putin announced a change in Russia’s nuclear doctrine enabling a lower threshold for launching a nuclear attack after the U.S. authorized Ukraine’s use of longer range missiles to strike military targets inside Russia.

In March 2022, Russian forces seized Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest such facility in Europe, and have been accused of routinely endangering the plant’s functionality while disregarding multiple calls from the U.S. and other nations to return the plant to Ukraine’s control.

“Before our eyes, civilizational principles at the basis of international law and nuclear non-proliferation are being profoundly compromised,” said Archbishop Gudziak.

The Permanent Synod of Ukrainian Greek Catholic Bishops, led by Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, declared in a March 2024 statement that “the 1994 Budapest memorandum signed by Russia, the US, and the UK is not worth the paper on which it was written.” Their statement warned, “So it will be with any agreement ‘negotiated’ with Putin’s Russia.”

More broadly, said Archbishop Gudziak, “Ukraine’s security is a question of global security.

“Justice and peace for Ukraine are necessary for stabilization in global affairs and a return to a rules-based international order,” he said. “Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament must be remembered. Security guarantees that are a precondition for such disarmament must be respected.”

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