Zelensky has formally rejected China as a guarantor of Ukraine’s security. His excuse was to accuse China of failing to fulfill obligations under the Budapest Memorandum, using this as a pretext to suggest that China is irresponsible. To attack China with false claims and even outright lies is hardly a dignified move for a president.

This matter must be made clear. First, China was not a signatory to the Budapest Memorandum. In 1994, when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons, the U.S., U.K., and Russia promised to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and not to use nuclear weapons against it. That was the origin of the Budapest Memorandum, which was signed by those four countries: the U.S., U.K., Russia, and Ukraine. China did not participate in the negotiations, nor was it a signatory. (Editor’s Note: China endorsed the memorandum through a government statement issued the same year.)

Second, the memorandum is not a treaty; it is a political commitment weaker than a legal obligation. After the Crimea crisis in 2014, the U.S., in order to avoid direct involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, openly stated that the memorandum was the result of political negotiations, not an international treaty, and carried no legal obligations. In other words, it was a political document that even the U.S. admitted did not entail a binding military commitment.

Third, after the memorandum was issued, China released a statement pledging security assurances to Ukraine, and in practice China has honored that statement for the past three decades. The statement had two main points: first, not to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine—something beyond doubt, since China does not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states or nuclear-free zones. Second, to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. To this day, the Chinese government has not recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as Russian territory. So there is no issue there either.

The real issue is: while China respects Ukraine, how has Ukraine treated China? Since the conflict escalated, Ukraine has repeatedly humiliated China in public: its parliamentarians have visited the Taiwan region in defiance of China’s sovereignty, its government officials have openly insulted China’s special envoy mediating the Russia-Ukraine conflict—and that’s not even mentioning the Azov Battalion’s connections with Hong Kong’s violent separatist rioters.

Editor: Zhiyu Wang