Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who is now an expert at the U.S-based Brookings Institution, has called absolutely absurd a statement by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov who claimed Russia had not violated the Budapest Memorandum since it did not use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.
The provision of lethal weapons to Ukraine should become an effective response to the growing threat coming from the Russian Federation, as written in a statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine on the occasion of the anniversary of the signing of the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances relating to Ukraine's accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.