Consider This from NPR - The long history of Russia's broken promises to Ukraine

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

Representatives from Russia and Ukraine will be in meetings to try to hammer out details of a ceasefire on Monday. But peace is still a long way off.For starters it's only a partial ceasefire—no strikes on energy infrastructure. It's only for 30 days.And the Ukrainians and Russians aren't even meeting with each other. The U.S. will be a go-between.One of the biggest things working against a new agreement, is what happened after Ukraine's last agreement with Russia. And the ones before that.Ukraine says it won't trust a promise from Russia. It needs security guarantees. To understand why, you've got to go back to the birth of independent Ukraine.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Here's what White House press secretary Caroline Levitt says about prospects for an end to the war in Ukraine. We have never been closer to peace than we are today. That may be true, but the current situation is still a very long way from a lasting peace. This week, the presidents of Ukraine and Russia agreed in separate phone calls with President Trump to a limited 30-day ceasefire. The exact details are in dispute, but it would at least cover attacks on energy infrastructure, like power plants.

Both sides are already accusing one another of violating the agreement. Meetings are scheduled for Monday in Saudi Arabia to work out the details. Here's State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce on Wednesday. Everyone now is at a table to get to the same goal. That's a metaphorical table in this case because Ukrainian and Russian officials will be in separate rooms with the U.S. acting as a go-between. All this for a partial one-month ceasefire. One of the biggest things working against an agreement to end the war is what happened

after Ukraine's last agreement with Russia's President Vladimir Putin and the ones before that. There is a long history of broken promises. In 2019, I signed with him the deal. Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, brought up that history in the Oval Office last month. It's what prompted the pushback from Vice President J.D. Vance and the argument that ultimately ended the meeting. He broke the ceasefire. He killed our people and he didn't exchange prisoners. We signed

the exchange of prisoners. But he didn't do it. What kind of diplomacy, J.D., you are speaking about? What do you mean? Consider this. Ukraine says it won't trust a promise from Russia. It needs security guarantees. To understand why, you've got to go back to the birth of independent Ukraine. From NPR, I'm Juana Sommers. From NPR, I'm Juana Sommers. It's Consider This from NPR. On August 24, 1991, as the Soviet Union was crumbling, Ukraine declared its independence. We are happy to feel our life without Moscow, without Russia. Karylo Stetsenko, a Ukrainian in Kiev, spoke to NPR about it a few days later.

We can't believe in this. Ukraine struggled for independence many hundred years. And now that is real. But almost immediately, Ukrainians worried about Russia trying to claim parts of their country. And their fear was justified. Within a few short days after that, spokesperson for president of the Russian Federation,

Boris Yeltsin, made a claim for Ukrainian territory. Sirhii Plahi is a historian at Harvard University. And when reporters asked him what borders he had in mind, he referred to the Crimea and Donbas. So that was the first case when the new democratic Russian leadership put in question the borders between Russia and Ukraine. I wanted to talk to him about the long history of broken agreements between Ukraine and Russia that haunts the current peace negotiations, about the reason Ukraine won't trust Russian promises. He says a lot of it goes back to an agreement from 1994 called the Budapest

Memorandum. So once the Soviet Union fell apart, the huge Soviet nuclear arsenal ended up to be stationed on the territory of now four independent states. And Ukraine inherited the biggest chunk of that aside from Russia. So what happened in Budapest in 1994, and at that time the president of the United States was Bill Clinton, was that Ukraine and other states that inherited Soviet nuclear arsenal were provided with assurances for their territorial integrity and for their security in exchange for turning the nuclear weapons to Russia. These include 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles and some 1,500 warheads targeted

at the United States. So Ukrainians were extremely concerned at that time. The nuclear weapons was the only deterrent that they had against Russia. That was happening at the time when conflict was still going on over what will happen to the Crimea. So Russia was making claims for Ukrainian territory. So Ukraine found itself in an impossible situation and had to agree to the deal. Danielle Pletka And of course, we know that that agreement, the Budapest Memorandum, did not end up protecting Ukraine.

In 2014, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, part of Ukraine, which brings us to another Russia-Ukraine deal, the Minsk agreements. Tell us what those laid out. The annexation of the Crimea in the spring of 2014 really became an opening stage for the war between Russia and Ukraine because the next move that Russia did, they were trying also to annex the eastern part of Ukraine called Donbass.

A few weeks after the fighting, the first Minsk agreements were reached, which was a sort of the armistice at that time. I want to play for you, if I can, another piece of tape. My colleague Eleanor Beardsley was in Donetsk in Ukraine just 10 days after Minsk won that first Minsk agreement. Let's listen. Barely had we gotten out of the car to take a look when...

I want to get out of here. Jesus, we're gone. Oh, God. Everyone scrambles and jumps back in their cars, but our driver seems frozen, and then... ...a second blast rocks our car. So much for the ceasefire. Well, what you can certainly hear in the background,

it's the actual war is going on. And we are talking about Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 because what happened was after Minsk 1, Russia decided that it was not really satisfied with the amount of territory that it had and the conditions that it imposed on Ukraine. So they resumed the war, the military action in early 2015, and then led to Minsk 2, which was more in alliance with their original plans. So we have the story of armistice agreements, peace agreements, or truce that was signed and violated again and again by the Russian Federation. Once it decided

that it was in a position to impose more favorable conditions, more favorable for Russia, but less favorable conditions for Ukraine, people are concerned that that can happen again. What lessons do you think Ukraine takes away from this history of broken promises as they are potentially heading towards another agreement with Russia? One thing is that there is a belief that giving up nuclear weapons back in 1994 was a major mistake, that Russia is treated the way it is treated, not because it is somehow economic powerhouse, but mostly it is treated that way

because it is a nuclear superpower. So the nuclear weapons is the real deterrent. The solution for Ukraine was perceived for a long period of time, was viewed in membership in NATO. That's why President Zelensky was keeping talking about NATO again and again and again. Now it doesn't look this is possible at all.

So for Zelensky, for Ukraine, the alliance, continuing alliance with the United States is extremely important. And that alliance is extremely important also for Europe, for stopping Russian aggression. And it is important for the United States of America, because if US leaves, the vacuum will be filled, and it's not given that the alliance that Ukraine will sign will be necessarily with Europe. It can be China as well.

China is already present in the post-Soviet space, providing security guarantees to Kazakhstan against Russia. So that's another possibility that China is ready to move in. Lauren Henry Ukraine is now in a position of negotiating with the same two countries that left it without its nuclear deterrent 30 years ago. I'm talking of course about the US and Russia. We've talked so much about the geopolitics of the situation, but I want to ask you about the people. If you can say, how do people in Ukraine feel about being back in this position again, decades later? Well, there is a huge concern and huge disappointment. And the United States was perceived, despite Budapest Memorandum, for all those decades

as really a flag bearer of democracy and of just peace. There was belief that there was also a level of democratic solidarity in the world, that people in Ukraine now realize that it is not there, or at least it is not on the level that they believed it was. So, yeah, huge disappointment, cynicism, the realization, okay, there is no one else but yourself to count on. We have been speaking with Sir Hiplahi. He's director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Thank you so much.

You're most welcome. Thank you. This episode was produced by Connor Donovan. It was edited by Courtney Dornig. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. Before we go, a word of thanks to our Consider This Plus listeners, whose support makes this show possible. Supporters also hear every episode

without messages from sponsors. If that's not you, it could be. To learn more, visit plus.npr.org. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Juana Sommers. Want to hear this podcast without sponsor breaks? Amazon Prime members can listen to Consider This sponsor-free through Amazon Music. Or you can also support NPR's vital journalism and get Consider This Plus at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org.