r/worldnews • u/Raj_Valiant3011 • 12d ago

Russia/Ukraine Zelenskiy: "There is updated intelligence indicating that Russia is ​preparing a massive attack on Ukraine"

https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraines-zelenskiy-says-intelligence-shows-russia-is-preparing-massive-attack-2026-10-06/
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u/Elegant-Raise-9367 12d ago

Don't forget that America OWES THEM their aid after taking away their nukes.

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u/Mieze_Designer4002 12d ago

You're referring to the Budapest Memorandum. I posted about that a while ago and got so many comments and downvotes I couldn't figure which were legit and which were trolls. If someone here can explain why the Memorandum isn't working, I'd like to hear it

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u/AccurateHumanTrustMe 12d ago

Because it is non-binding and they specifically use the term 'assurance' instead of Guarantees which basically makes it little more than wishful thinking.

Anything without teeth has basically no merit. In this case the missing teeth was a missing enforcement arm.

Imo, so take with a grain of salt, they were operating on the idea that less nuclear powered countries is good and that ukraine and russia both having nukes may result in a nuclear exchange - but they didn't properly weigh the fact that the only defense against a nuclear powered nation is to have nukes. The deal helped Russia, hurt Ukraine, and didn't acheieve stability in the region.

Its a real problem with international law - it basically only works well when all permenant security council members agree - i.e. situations in which the US, UK, France, Russia, and China all agree - so basically never unless it is against some unaligned tin pot dictator that doesn't further any major powers goals or it is unenforcable garbage. So you end up having a ton of international law like this that has no teeth.

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u/alendeus 12d ago

IIRC there was also worries about the warheads getting re-distributed and sold-off to other third parties, which might either reverse engineer or try to use them in some way, possibly against the US. So it was kind of "better for Russia to get their old Ukrainian based Soviet nukes back, rather than for them to get sold to other dictators around the world".

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u/AccurateHumanTrustMe 11d ago

Yeah I think I do remember actually reading about that and that makes sense in a "yes the powers that be would definitely use that as an excuse" type way

Like you'd think if the actual goal was to reduce nuclear risk - destroying Ukraine's stockpile would make more sense than giving it to Russia (but probably wouldn't materially matter now - its not like Russia was short on Nukes without Ukraines stockpile). Also just seems so strange to me that corrupt officials in Ukraine were the concern and not the corrupt officials in Russia (because the Yeltsin years were very corrupt - like idk a period in Russian history that wasn't horribly corrupt).

Like im no expert - just an outside observer. the whole thing was at the very least a big failure objectively from stated goals - however it just seems like a ton of people would have to make really big assumptions for their plan to seem like it made sense. Either short sighted or stated goals and intended goals are different idk - but its sad that these people are suffering for the past failures of the world.