Although the text lacks explicit security guarantees, the officials argued that they had negotiated far more favourable terms and depicted the deal as a way of broadening the relationship with the US to shore up Ukraine’s prospects after three years of war.

it’s like the budapest memorandum where the ukrainians also gave up leverage in the hopes of getting security guarantees later on; that, this new agreement, and the misbelief that they could join nato leading to the war makes me wonder about them, but, to be fair, our own institutions are also capping themselves to kiss trumps’ ring so maybe there’s some wisdom in doing this somewhere that can’t be seen.