The United States has a moral obligation to support Ukraine consistently and resolutely, as Washington has already made a critical mistake in the past by failing to defend its sovereignty. This was emphasised by the pastor Mark Burns, who is one of the former US president’s influential spiritual advisers Donald Trump.
A historical debt and the cost of nuclear disarmament
According to the pastor, the roots of the current crisis go back to 1994, when an agreement was signed The Budapest Memorandum. At that time, Ukraine voluntarily gave up the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for guarantees of security, territorial integrity and political independence from the world’s leading powers, in particular the United States.
«We have already let Ukraine down. In 1994, they agreed to give up their nuclear weapons, and we let them down,», — Burns admitted frankly.
The historical mistake of 2014
Mark Burns emphasised that 2014 marked the first major failure of American diplomacy and the policy of containment. When Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea and launched a hybrid aggression in Donbas, the US response, as one of the main signatories and guarantors of the Budapest Memorandum, proved too weak and inadequate to the scale of the threat.
The failure to take decisive action at that time, in the pastor’s view, effectively gave the Kremlin free rein to proceed with a full-scale escalation.
A call for moral leadership
Trump’s spiritual advisor is convinced that Washington has no right to repeat the mistakes of the past. Support for Ukraine is not merely a matter of geopolitics, but above all a question of US national honour and morality.
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Ukraine has fulfilled its part of the agreement: gave up its most powerful deterrent.
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The US must do its bit: to protect those who were promised safety.
«Ukraine has given up its most powerful weapon, and we have let them down. So the message is simple: we must keep our word. We are the United States; we are the most powerful nation in the world, but we are also a nation of moral principles,», — concluded Mark Burns.
This statement, coming from a member of Donald Trump’s inner circle, sends an important signal. It demonstrates that within Republican and conservative circles in the US there is a clear understanding of America’s historical responsibility towards Ukraine and the need to honour international commitments.
