VIENNA, July 1. /TASS/. Ukraine’s Western partners were preparing it for war when they pushed it to abandon its neutrality, Gyorgy Varga, a Hungarian expert in the area of international relations, said.

"Ukraine was called a NATO member, despite the fact that a larger part of its society supported and voted for neutrality. Foreign players opted to disregard the principle of neutrality, which underlaid the declaration of independence and constitution," Varga, who led the OSCE Observer Mission to Russia in 2017-2021, said at a roundtable meeting on issues of forming a multipolar world order.

According to the expert, the Budapest memorandum that was signed by neutral Ukraine and the guarantees this memorandum envisaged were not observed.

"For eight years, the guarantor did nothing to push Ukraine toward implementing the Minsk agreements. Instead, they were preparing Ukraine for a war. Foreign partners exerted pressure on Ukraine to get it to turn down the Istanbul accords in April 2022 and continue the war, as Ukraine’s chief negotiator confessed," Varga said.

The roundtable meeting was organized by the Russian delegation. Its participants included diplomats, journalists, and experts.