Ukrainian official: Lavrov is lying blatantly about Budapest memorandum
According to the text of the Budapest memorandum, its signatories undertake not to use nuclear weaponry or any other kind of weaponry against Ukraine, said Yevhen Marchuk, Ukraine’s representative in the Trilateral Contact Group, who has previously held the positions of prime minister, defense minister and NSDC secretary, in a comment on statements made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
“Take a look at the text of the Budapest memorandum and just read article No. 2 of this document, where it says that the signatories “affirm their undertakings (undertakings specifically)… that none (i.e. not only nuclear) of their weaponry will ever be used against Ukraine,” Marchuk wrote on his Facebook page.
In his opinion, Lavrov is “simply lying blatantly to journalists, hoping that nobody will look at the original text”.
On January 15, Sergey Lavrov said that Russia has not violated the Budapest Memorandum, since it has not used a nuclear weapon against Ukraine.
Furthermore, Lavrov remarked that Ukraine, in parallel with the Budapest Memorandum, supposedly undertook in a separate statement not to “promote racist, neo-Nazi, or xenophobic trends, but that which took place after Maidan was the most serious violation of these commitments by our Ukrainian neighbors”.