As Western fears of a Russian invasion intensified, Ukraine said Monday it had requested an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss ways to guarantee its security and deescalate the crisis with Russia.
The request, which was announced by Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, came as President Vladimir Putin of Russia was weighing whether to recognize two breakaway regions of Eastern Ukraine, which could help lay the groundwork for Russian military forces to pour into Ukrainian territory. If Putin decides to invade Ukraine, it could mark one of the biggest conflicts in Europe since World War II.
“I officially requested UNSC member states to immediately hold consultations under Article 6 of the Budapest memorandum to discuss urgent actions aimed at de-escalation, as well as practical steps to guarantee the security of Ukraine,” Kuleba said in a Twitter post.
The Budapest memorandum refers to a 1994 agreement under which Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, former republics of the collapsed Soviet Union, gave up their stockpiles of Russian nuclear weapons from the Cold War era and joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty in exchange for security guarantees. The efficacy of the agreement has long been called into question, however. Ukraine and Western nations have said that Russia grossly violated the agreement in 2014 by seizing Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.
It was not immediately clear when or even whether Ukraine’s request would be taken up by the 15-member Security Council. Russia, one of the council’s five veto-wielding permanent members, is president of the council for February under a rotating schedule.
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