Roman Sheremeta
Dec 11, 2025
You want to calculate what Ukraine “costs”?
Fine. Let’s calculate what the guarantors of the Budapest Memorandum owe Ukraine.
People who complain about “how much the West spends on Ukraine” forget one thing:
Ukraine has already paid the highest possible price for promises that were never fulfilled.
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- What Ukraine gave up under the Budapest Memorandum
Ukraine surrendered the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal:
- 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads
- 176 ICBMs
- 44 Tu-160 / Tu-95MS strategic bombers
- Full launch, storage, and command infrastructure
Current value: $2–4 trillion.
Yes — trillion.
Ukraine traded this arsenal for security guarantees from the US, UK, and Russia.
Guarantees that cracked in 2014 and completely collapsed in 2022.
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- How much the US has spent on Ukraine
In 11 years of war, the total US support amounts to:
$80–90 billion.
For comparison:
Ukraine gave up a nuclear deterrent worth 30–50 times more.
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- How US support has been restricted
For years, Ukraine was denied critical tools needed for survival:
- ATACMS long-range missiles
- F-16 fighter jets
- Adequate Patriot air-defense systems
- Permission to strike inside Russia (only partially allowed in 2024–25)
These delays cost thousands of Ukrainian lives and entire cities that could have been saved.
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- The real cost of war for Ukraine
In 11 years:
- 450,000+ killed and wounded
- Over 50% of energy infrastructure destroyed
- Trillion-dollar economic losses
- Factories, investments, and human capital wiped out
- A development trajectory comparable to Poland’s — shattered not only by Russian missiles but also by Western hesitation
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- So who really owes whom?
Ukraine never asked for charity.
Ukraine asked its guarantors to honor their own signatures.
While the US and UK insisted the Budapest Memorandum “was not binding,” Russia prepared for a full-scale invasion.
Today, Ukraine is defending:
- NATO’s entire eastern flank
- Europe’s energy routes
- The Black Sea
- The global security system the United States built after WWII
Ukraine is presenting the real bill: for cities erased, for millions of lives broken, for decades of development stolen — and for the security guarantees that existed only on paper.
And that bill is not for Ukraine to pay. It is for those who promised protection — and failed to deliver it.
Author: Yuliya Azizova
……………
Russia’s war is a war against life itself. As it kills people, it destroys entire cities, erasing homes, schools, hospitals, cafés, parks. Russian propaganda calls this “liberation,” but in reality, it is the opposite: a stripping away of existence, of normal life, of the very possibility of having a home.
Most of the cities that Russia has wiped out are in Ukraine’s east, in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of our country. Once full of life, now many of them are emptied.
Despite all efforts by Ukraine and its partners to pursue peace, the list of cities devastated by Russia has grown this year. Russia remains the sole reason this war continues, deliberately blocking every path toward peace.
The world cannot accept this. Together, we must end the war, stop Russia, and ensure it never repeats this destruction again.
Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine
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A European Parliament interpreter could not hold back tears during the speech of 11-year-old Roman Oleksiv from Lviv.
Roman survived the missile strike on Vinnytsia on July 14, 2022 — the attack that killed his mother. It was the last time he ever saw her alive.
After the tragedy, he underwent 36 surgeries and a long period of rehabilitation due to severe burns and injuries. Despite everything he endured, Roman returned to school, dancing, and music.
Source: Live Ukraine
Video here :
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CrFecJiiX/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Yesterday a commenter in the DT; John Calvert, said the following:
“Zelensky has not been offered any peace deal. What the Americans are offering him is a complete surrender to Russia without even having the good grace to guarantee his borders by placing a few thousand troops on the proposed new border. America under the Trump administration is an ally of Russia let’s be clear about this. It’s not an opinion it’s not conjecture it’s an obvious and glaring fact. For all the American readers on this forum who support Donald Trump do you actually realise that you are supporting a man who is obviously a Russian asset? There is no other possible conclusion that a neutral observer could come to.”
Hard to argue with that isn’t it?
Anyone that can feed him or herself knows what an immoral sack of dog shite this criminal really is. Those who don’t see it that way are just as morally perverted.
Also from Roman:
US microchip manufacturers Intel Corporation, AMD, and Texas Instruments are accused of failing to prevent their technology from ending up in russian-made drones and missiles that have killed and injured civilians in Ukraine.
A series of lawsuits have been filed in Texas state court accusing major American semiconductor companies — Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments and U.S. distributor Mouser Electronics — of failing to prevent their microchips and components from being illegally diverted into russian missiles, drones and other weapons used against Ukrainian civilians.
The plaintiffs are dozens of Ukrainian civilians and families who allege that restricted components originally manufactured in the United States ended up in russian and Iranian-made weapons systems, including cruise missiles and UAVs, despite longstanding U.S. export controls and sanctions.
According to the legal filings, third-party intermediaries, shell companies and re-export channels are believed to have bypassed export rules, funneling chips into foreign military supply chains. The suits claim companies “ignored warning signs” and lacked adequate oversight to stop these diversions.
The litigation argues that while these manufacturers did not intend for their products to be used as weapon components, they failed to enforce effective supply-chain controls — leading to components being found in missiles and drones that injured and killed civilians in Ukraine between 2023 and 2025.
This development highlights ongoing challenges in enforcing export restrictions on dual-use technologies, particularly in complex global supply networks where microchips can quickly change hands through multiple countries and distributors.
What’s next: The lawsuits seek compensation for the victims and aim to hold industry players accountable for compliance failures — potentially setting precedents for how technology companies manage export risk in conflict zones.