Guarantees of security for Ukraine: unlearned lessons of the Budapest Memorandum

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In the context of the war unleashed by the russian federation in Ukraine, the issues of national security and state security have acquired a remarkable scale of acuteness, actualized the expediency of both rethinking the current security documents and complex approaches to the issues of regulatory and legal security provision, became an impetus for the initiation of new processes related to the search for some new, more effective and efficient security guarantees for Ukraine. The proposed article raises an urgent problem in modern science and practice, in particular, the theory of law and the law of national security, international law, international relations - new regulatory security guarantees. Using the example of the Budapest Memorandum, a valid document on security guarantees, singned in 1994 in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, its legal nature is analyzed, attention is focused on the fallacy of attributing it to such a source of law as normative and legal contract, its features are singled out precisely as an act of «soft law», its place among other sources of law in the national legal system of Ukraine as a political document is specified, is classified as an auxiliary source of law, which has properties under certain conditions to penetrate into the main sources of law, contributing to the main law sources in the security issues legal regulation. The author states the problem of the necessity to substantiate the effectiveness of such documents in national security issues regulation, in particular their ability to counter real threats in the context of the right to security. Analyzing complex approaches to the understanding of security guarantees, the author tries to understand the needs, possibilities and expediency of the search for optimal security guarantees, as well as potential threats that may arise due to a misunderstanding of the role and place of acts of «soft law» among other sources of law. In this regard, aspects of both legal and non-legal issues are highlighted, and legal issues are first of all detailed and analyzed. Options for solving legal problems related to security guarantees are offered, as well as prospects for their development.