Is it really though? Even if Ukraine had nukes, would it have threatened and actually have the will to use it over the lost of the Crimea? The conflict was low intensity warfare, which nukes are not particularly well suited for. I don't think nukes are the be-all-end-all weapons people think they are. There are huge consequences to using them, especially against another nuclear power.
Firstly "was" is not the right word, the war is ongoing: http://tass.com/world/965974
Secondly, imo the nature of the conflict is less important than whether a concentrated population of the adversary's citizens are within range of the weapon as far as determining the effectiveness of nuclear deterrent.
> Even if Ukraine had nukes, would it have threatened and actually have the will to use it over the lost of the Crimea?
Would those that made the decision to invade have accepted the risk of even the most minute possibility? No leader has done that so far.
Presumably, they realise the consequences of dropping a nuclear bomb in a region of the world with a couple billion people or three.
Over a conventional invasion by a neighboring nation-state with massive conventional superiority with a paper-thin cover story?
Probably. I mean, that’s why the USSR didn't pull that stunt against any of the NATO countries bordering its satellites, ever, even though they did similar things to other neighbors. And those bordering states were merely allies of the nuclear powers, not nuclear powers themselves.
Honestly, use of nuclear weapons just sounds like pure madness, no matter what the threat one is under. I mean, unless we're talking about an alien invasion (and I'm not impartial to keeping around a few nukes just in case that ever happens).
The Argentine invasion of the Falklands might be considered an exception to that.
Even the 1954 transfer was only 'administrative'. By all accounts, Ukraine should not have kept Crimea in 1991.
Crimea is 70% ethnically Russian and the majority wanted to become part of Russia. Russia invaded and held a vote. Ukraine's response to that was that the vote should not have happened not because it was undemocratic, but because it was unconstitutional.
Their story was pretty solid.
It's another story WRT to Eastern Ukraine. Ukraine's military units had poor morale and were repeatedly destroyed by regular Russian soldiers AKA "volunteers". The time frame is not days as in Crimea. Perhaps the threat of nukes would have stopped Russian tanks and soldiers from "volunteering" in Ukraine.
It is now up to the armchair historians and alt-history writers to contemplate the what-ifs.
However, some are arguing that this view is incorrect - there's a paper linked on the wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine#De...
Yeah, but the US got the Ukrainian gold.