If Joe Biden is to reset the U.S. relationship with Russia, the starting point needs to be 1994, the year the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, the U.S. and the U.K. sat side-by-side in Hungary to sign the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. Its intent and purpose was clear. Ukraine was to give up the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
In exchange, Russia would respect the existing borders of Ukraine and “refrain from the threat of or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.”