Ukraine WAS a nuclear weapons state, until the US agreed to protect them from Russia with the US's nuclear weapons, if they gave up their own.
In the 90s. Twenty years buys lots of time for code cracking, reverse engineering and—if that fails—bullshitting.
With the benefit of hindsight, Ukraine should have kept its nukes. (Finland, the Baltics, Poland and Romania should probably develop them.)
They would've quickly sold them to Iran like they did with nuclear capable missiles. [0]
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005-05/ukraine-admits-missi...
Unclear. A nuclear Kyiv would have different security incentives than a non-nuclear one.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/world/europe/ukraine-zele...
And in any case it's was not simply removing the safety devices on the weapons, you need to be able to target the ICBMs at Russia, which Ukraine could not do:
> In fact, the presence of strategic nuclear missiles on its territory posed several dilemmas to a Ukraine hypothetically bent on keeping them to deter Russia. The SS-24s do not have the ability to strike targets at relatively short distances (that is, below about 2000 km); the variable-range SS- 19s are able, but Ukraine cannot properly maintain them. [...] the SS-19s were built in Russia and use a highly toxic and volatile liquid fuel. To complicate matters further, targeting programs and blocking devices for the SS-24 are Russian made. The retargeting of ICBM is probably impossible without geodetic data from satellites which are not available to Kiev.
> Cruise missiles for strategic bombers stored in Ukraine have long been 'disabled in place'.[...] As with ICBMs, however, retargeting them would be impossible for Ukraine, which does not have access to data from geodetic satellites; the same goes for computer maintenance.
From SIPRI research report 10; The Soviet Nuclear Weapon Legacy
So Ukraine did not have usable weapons at hand. But it did, and does, certainly have the capacity to build entirely new weapons, if given time.
Agreed. But nobody was invading Ukraine in 1994.
The weapons were seen as a security liability. In reality, they were bargaining chips.
> to me it doesn't seems like an incredibly bright idea in a world where the existing nuclear states doesn't want anyone else to get nukes too
To be clear, Kyiv made the right decision given what they knew in 1994. Non-proliferation was in vogue. America and British security guarantees meant something.
If Kyiv knew what we know today, that the Budapest security guarantees were worthless from each of Washington, London and Moscow; that wars of conquest would be back; and that non-proliferation would be seen through the lens of regional versus global security, it would have been a bright idea to demand more before letting them go, or at least to drag out negotiations so Ukraine could study the weapons and maybe even extract some samples.
> SS-24s do not have the ability to strike targets at relatively short distances (that is, below about 2000 km)
Again, having the nukes would give Kyiv leverage. At a minimum they'd have HEU and a proven design to study.
And again, don't undervalue bullshitting in geopolitics. If Kyiv said they have a short-range nuclear missile, it would not be credible. But would it be incredible enough to green light an invasion?
And doing that for some design info is really not worth the risk: just recruit some soviet weapons designers, for sure there are Ukrainians in that project already.
We literally don't know. A large part of stockpile stewardship programmes at the Sandia national labs is aimed at answering this question.
The ones in Ukraine got moved into Russia, in exchange for Ukraine receiving money and security guarantees.
Signed 5 December 1994
1. Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders (in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act).[10]
2. Refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of the signatories to the memorandum, and undertake that none of their weapons will ever be used against these countries, except in cases of self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. (...)
The Budapest Memorandum is not a treaty, and it does not confer any new legal obligations for signatory states.
It also states that many Ukrainians at the time considered that keeping the nukes was an unrealistic option since all maintenance and equipment required to maintain them were located in Russia, Ukraine was under a financial crisis at the time and had no means to develop those things itself. I just can’t understand people now claiming it was a mistake to give up the nukes. Russia might have reasonably invaded Ukraine as soon as it was clear they intended to keep them as they knew they didn’t really have the ability to use them and no Western government would support them using them and starting a war that would likely contaminate half of Europe and cause terrible loss of life. It was absolutely the right thing to do for Ukraine. Even if that didn’t save them from future aggression, which I think was mostly the fault of the West for not being prepared to really sign a binding document and put the lives of their own soldiers on the line.
It's not quite the same, since Ukraine was part of the USSR, and Ukrainian scientists, engineers, and tradesmen contributed to the effort. Germany, on the other hand, was never part of the American federation, and didn't contribute to American weapons development...since Wernher von Braun/Operation Paperclip.
Ukraine at one point wanted to formally claim ownership over the weapons, as after all breaking the permissive action locks wasn’t that difficult. The US talked them out of it, as a lead up to the Budapest Memorandum.
We all know how much the security guarantees of that agreement were worth.
They were worth 30 years of peace. It wasn't a treaty. Everyone knew it was a handshake agreement without consequences for breaking it. It prevented an immediate war in eastern Europe after the fall of the USSR. A war that could have been much worse involving nuclear weapons.
Unfortunately the war came 30 years later.
For something as serious as giving up a nuclear arsenal it’s reasonable to expect to get more than 20 years of peace and for the co-signers to actual fulfil their parts of the agreement, whether legally binding or not.
The end result is that no country will soon trust a Russian non-aggression promise and none will trust an American promise of support.
It is also widely believed to have had a hand in the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko with dioxin in 2004, in order to give an edge to his pro-Russian opponent, Viktor Yanukovych.
But even if that’s not true there’s ample evidence of overt Russian influence campaigns to support Yanukovych in that election, which was just 10 years after the Budapest Memorandum.
This is not an accurate comparison.
It's not that Russia had nukes in Ukraine and withdrew them. Many of the Soviet soldiers manning them were Ukrainians and stayed behind. Much of the infrastructure for maintaining the Soviet arsenal was also in Ukraine and had to be rebuilt in Russia. The situation was more akin to if the US broke up and Louisiana (which has a lot of nuclear warheads stationed in it) is dealing with whether they are now a nuclear power, or if they need to hand them over to South Carolina or something.
Russia is the single legal successor of the USSR, so all Soviet nukes became Russian nukes, regardless where they were located. So after the USSR broke up, Russia did have nukes in Ukraine and withdrew them.
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mears...
He was right in 2014:
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-t...
And he is still right:
https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/who-caused-the-ukraine-wa...
It ignores that people should have their right to self-determination, don't want to live under russian oppression. As somebody whose family lives were ruined by exactly same oppression of exactly same russia (err soviet union but we all know who set the absolute tone of that 'union' and once possible everybody else run the fuck away as quickly as possible) I can fully understand anybody who wants to have basic freedom and some prospect of future for their children - russia takes that away, they subjugate, oppress, erase whole ethnicities, whoever sticks out and their close ones is dealt with brutally.
Not worth the electrical energy used to display that text. Unless you enjoy russian propaganda, then all is good.
I think the real difference lies in whether one believes Ukraine deserves to decide its own path, or if it's forever doomed to be a chess piece on the board between spheres of influence, which seems to be the mindset both Putin and Trump are stuck in.
3. Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus, and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
4. Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
Both seems to not happen as stipulated.
Edit: I didn't read properly, 4 obviously didn't happen, my bad.
https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/P...
> 3. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the Republic of Belarus of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
the US regime is attempting to do this
[1]: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Memorandum_on_Security_Assura...
I don’t know this. Thank you.
Economic coercion attempting to violate sovereignty would be something like the threatened (actual?) tariffs on Brazil for imprisoning Bolsonaro.