Les accords en matière de sécurité et coopération entre
l’Ukraine et divers Etats : zoom sur des textes atypiques

Benjamin Meret

This article focuses on the security and cooperation agreements that various states have concluded with Ukraine. It is argued that these texts are atypical for two reasons. The first is that their legal nature is dubious : for the most part, they appear to be non-binding agreements, but some of the texts contain elements that
might suggest that the States wanted to do more, casting doubt in the mind of the interpreter seeking to discover what they were trying to achieve. The second is that these texts, whatever their legal nature, are intended to guarantee the non-neutrality of the States that signed them with regard to Ukraine, without making them parties to the conflict. The article therefore argues that they constitute a practice in favor of the existence in international law of a status situated between belligerency and neutrality : non-belligerency.