From Budapest to Minsk, peace deals never stopped Putin's wars — why Ukraine fears US-Russia deal

US President Donald Trump prides himself as a master dealmaker, but no deal has ever been able to prevent Vladimir Putin from invading a country.

As soon as Trump announced the summit with Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected any deal that he could unilaterally strike with Putin.

The reason for the quick rejection was simple: Trump might not have read the Ukraine-Russia history, but Zelenskyy was well aware that no deal —not even the one negotiated by the United States— ever brought peace to Ukraine from Russia.

For Ukraine, after all, the Russian invasion of 2022 was not the first — Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014 when it occupied and annexed Crimea and then attacked eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region and fought a war with proxies until 2022 when it launched the full-scale invasion. Ukraine was also not the first neighbour that Putin invaded — that was Georgia in 2008.

Putin has always had the restoration of the Russian empire that ended with the fall of the Soviet Union as his life’s goal. A peace deal has never stood in the way of trying to achieve the goal.

From Budapest to Minsk agreements, the many deals Putin broke

In one of the modern history’s biggest what-ifs, Ukraine had the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in 1991, but it gave up those weapons over the next many years in exchange for security guarantees. But those securities obviously meant nothing.

Budapest Memorandum (1994)

In 1994, Ukraine signed a deal with Russia, the United States, and United Kingdom for help for a civilian nuclear programme and security guarantees in exchange of giving up nuclear weapons that it inherited from the Soviet Union. The deal was known as the ‘Budapest Memorandum’.

Under the agreement, the signatories —including Russia— provided Ukraine security guarantees. They said that all nations would respect its boundaries and sovereignty and assured Ukraine that, in case of an attack, they would come to its aid via the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) — the United States, the UK, and Russia are permanent UNSC members. Despite the optimism at the time, critics had warned the deal was doomed to fail.

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In 1993, political scientist John Mearsheimer argued that it was “imperative” for Ukraine to hold onto nuclear weapons to “maintain peace” as these nuclear weapons would be a deterrent and would ensure that Russians “who have a history of bad relations with Ukraine do not move to reconquer it”. He was right.

Two decades later, Russia —the security guarantor— invaded Ukraine and annexed an entire province. The Budapest deal meant nothing to him.

Treaty of Friendship with Ukraine (1997)

In 1997, Russia signed the Treaty of Friendship with Ukraine that involved the recognition of Ukraine’s borders and sovereignty.

In 2014, with the invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, Putin killed the treaty.

Minsk agreements I & 2 (2014 & ‘15)

The two Minsk agreements sought to end the fighting in Donbas, the eastern region of Ukraine comprising Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. They failed completely and the Russian proxies continued to wage the insurgency in the region until 2022 when Russia launched the full-scale invasion.

The Minsk agreements were negotiated between Ukraine and Russian proxies with the mediation of Russia, France, Germany, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The agreements covered ceasefires and withdrawals, humanitarian assistance, economic cooperation, and political concessions on part of Ukraine in Donbas that involved greater autonomy for those two provinces.

Neither of the agreements was ever implemented. The experience continues to shape the Ukrainian position today that no peace deal can contain Putin.

No peace deal stopped Russia’s campaign against Ukraine

Even before the Russian invasion in 2014, neither the Budapest deal nor the friendship treaty stopped Putin for waging a subversive campaign against Ukraine.

In 2004, Russia meddled in Ukraine’s election in favour of its puppet, Viktor Yanukovych, whose victory led to mass protests that came to be called ‘Orange Revolution’. There were widespread allegations of vote rigging and intimidation of voters. The Supreme Court annulled the result, and elections were held again that Viktor Yushchenko, a reformist and a pro-Western politician, won.

Yushchenko was poisoned that year and the assassination attempt was attributed to Russia.

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The Russian puppet, Yanukovych, became the Ukrainian president in 2010. In 2014, he was ousted in mass protests. Incensed at the Ukrainians for ousting his puppet, Putin invaded Crimea and occupied it.

A weak deal to set stage for future invasion

After seeing Putin break all treaties over the past two decades, Ukraine knows that a weak deal in the ongoing war is bound to be worth less than the paper it would be signed.

If Ukraine would be forced to accept a weak deal to end the war, that would set the stage for another attempt to attack Ukraine , says Kseniya Kirillova, a Russia analyst at Jamestown Foundation, a Washington DC-based think tank.

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However, Kirillova says that Europe and the international community enabled Putin’s aggression as they essentially returned to business as usual with Russia after the invasion and annexation of Crimea.

Except for sanctions, Russia did not face any consequences and European Union (EU) continued to trade as usual with Russia, says Kirillova.

“After the invasion and annexation of Crimea, there were hopes that Russia would be punished. But the war just faded from the mind of Europe and the United States with the Minsk agreements that anyway failed to achieve anything. They did not take any measures to stop future Russian aggression. We may see again that they return to business as usual with Russia if a deal is reached. That would not deter Russia. That would encourage future aggression,” says Kirillova.

In the summit with Trump at Alaska, Putin would most likely present to President Trump conditions that are unacceptable to Ukraine in a bid to paint Zelenskyy as an obstacle to peace, according to Kirillova.

“Then, Putin would likely accuse Zelenskyy of sabotaging peace negotiations, which would allow him to continue the war while simultaneously currying favour with President Trump by framing Ukraine as unwilling to seek peace,” Kirillova further says.