You're reading: Russia’s numerous treaty transgressions of Ukraine’s sovereignty

In recent days official Kyiv and the White House have accused Russia of breaching several international and bilateral agreements with regard to Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and national security. On Feb. 27 Russian troops started a full-scale invasion of Crimea in violation of numerous treaties, they say. 

Principal among them, according to Serhiy
Taran of the International Democracy Institute, is the 1994
Budapest Memorandum
. Ukraine received national security assurances on
behalf of Russia, America and the UK in exchange for giving up its nuclear
weapons arsenal – the third largest in the world at the time.

Later on, China and France joined its
provisions in the form of individual statements. The presidents of Ukraine, the
Russian Federation, the U.S., and the prime minister of the UK signed the
memorandums on Dec. 5, 1994 in connection with the accession of Ukraine to the
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Russia has also violated the 1997 Russian
Black Sea basing agreement, insist Ukrainian and U.S. authorities. In 1997,
Ukraine allowed Russia to base its Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol for an annual
payment of $93 million until 2017. Fugitive Ex-President Viktor Yanukovych
extended the lease until 2042 in exchange for a natural gas price discount.

Russian occupying troops stand guard outside a Ukrainian military base that they have surrounded in Perevalne, 20 kilometers south of Simferopol.

The treaty regulated Russian Navy deployment
on the peninsula including its size and movement in and to Crimea.

Former commander of the Russian Black Sea
Fleet Adm. Vladimir
Kormoyedov said
that according to bilateral agreements, the Russian Navy
may deploy up to 25,000 personnel and up to 100 combat and support vessels at
naval facilities in Ukraine.

“The
treaty between Ukraine and Russia limits the total size. Russia can’t just add
another ship to the fleet. They can’t arbitrarily attach more units,” Mark
Galeotti, author of “Russian Security and Paramilitary Forces Since 1991,” told
the Washington Post.

Galeotti said the 810 Naval
Infantry Brigade has 2,500 marines. “They’re not elite, but they are better
than average. They acquitted themselves well in Georgia and fighting pirates
off Somalia. There are also some naval special forces. It’s hard to be sure,
but maybe 200 to 300…There’s a large Black Sea Naval Air Force and ancillary
groups — technical, security, administrative. You can put a gun in many of
their hands, if need be. If you need people to block a road, they can do it,”
he told the Washington Post.

Taran added that the Russian
navy must mutually agree with Ukraine and coordinate all naval military movements
to and on the Crimean peninsula, including the addition or rotation of vessels.

As a signatory of the United Nations Charter and
the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, which
established the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Russia has
blatantly violated a number of obligations and principles, U.S. and Ukrainian
authorities maintain.

They include “sovereign equality, respect for the rights in
inherent sovereignty, refraining from the threat or use of force, territorial
integrity of states, non-intervention in internal affairs…fulfillment in good
faith of obligations under international law.”

Kyiv Post editor Mark
Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].