[mytailorisrich]

Europe and the US never wanted to be forced to intervene in Ukraine, hence why they were not in a rush to consider Ukraine's push to join NATO.

The Budapest memorandum does not make any promises to help. Regarding Crimea, the breach is Russia's, not the West's.

[baybal2]

> The Budapest memorandum does not make any promises to help.

It does, go read the text

[mytailorisrich]

I have. So where does it?

[pierrebai]

I think it refers to this:

    Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".

Obviously, Russia did not use nuclear weapon... but maybe the fact that Russia has nuclear weapon and invaded Crimea means Ukraine is under threat of nuclear weapons...

[mytailorisrich]

That's not a promise to send any help or to help militarily.

It just says that if Ukraine is nuked (quite an extreme scenario to start with) they'll ask the Security Council (where Russia has a veto) to do something about it. You can argue that this constitutes a promise to 'help', but frankly sending a "get well soon" card would be more helpful.

Hence my first comment: The US and the West do not want to be forced to intervene and thus they never made any promise, binding or otherwise, to.

The UN did vote a resolution on Ukraine and Crimea in 2014.

As I also wrote, it is Russia that breached the memorandum but not respecting Ukraine's borders as they were but, tough.