“We sent peacekeepers all over the world”: expert explains why Ukraine was never neutral

Political analyst Ruslan Bortnik explained that Ukraine has always been a non-aligned country, while neutrality is something like Switzerland has, and Ukraine has never had such guarantees, Politeka reports.

He spoke about this on his blog.

“What is the fundamental difference? With a non-aligned status, you do not have internationally recognized security guarantees; you defend yourself on your own. You can enter into situational military alliances and jointly develop the defense industry. Neutrality does not allow for any military cooperation with anyone. You rely only on external forces. You do not cooperate with anyone militarily, but in return you have security guarantees from international players,” Ruslan Bortnik explains.

The goal of Ukraine’s neutrality, he says, was proclaimed in the 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty, but that neutrality was later included neither in the Act of Declaration of Independence nor in the Constitution. Later, under Yanukovych, the expert recalls, there was an attempt to introduce a similar provision into law, but that also referred to non-alignment, and that law has long since been repealed.

“Ukraine has always been non-aligned, meaning it maintained military cooperation with many players and participated in many military operations. Let me remind you that we sent peacekeepers all over the world. We have been developing a cooperation program with NATO since 1997. We were never neutral. Please, do not confuse the two,” Ruslan Bortnik emphasizes.

Ukraine is still, the expert notes, a non-aligned state today, but one that is much more integrated with NATO. According to him, when historians analyze our situation 50 years from now, they will write that for 35 years Ukraine was at times a more sovereign state, at times less sovereign, at peace, at war—but throughout that entire period, it remained non-aligned.

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