With the war between Russia and Ukraine fast approaching the three-year mark, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has once again expressed regret on his country’s decision to give up nuclear weapons under the ‘Budapest Memorandum’ of 1994.
When the Soviet Union collapsed more than three decades ago, some newly independent states inherited Soviet nuclear weapons.
Ukraine was one such state. However, it was soon asked to abandon the nukes by Russia, the US, and the UK, in exchange for security assurances. Ukraine eventually gave in to the pressure and agreed to the decommissioning of its nuclear weapons..
That, however, did not end well for the country. Twenty years after the memorandum was signed, Russia launched an offensive on Ukraine and annexed Crimea, defying all the assurances that Ukraine was promised.
Crimea’s annexation ushered a new era of hostility between the two former Soviet states, which eventually resulted in Russia launching an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The rest is history.
Expressing regret in the latest conversation with the Il Foglio newspaper, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine exchanged nuclear weapons for war instead of security guarantees.
The Ukrainian President also recalled his previous conversations about the Budapest Agreement with US President Donald Trump. Zelenskyy asserted that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not keep his word, implying that the decision was a humongous mistake.
“Putin gives his word and then does not keep it. We talked about the Budapest Memorandum, and he (Trump) heard my position. I believe that this should not have been done either with Ukraine or with Europe. Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons. I do not claim that it should have been given up or not. In my opinion, it shouldn’t have been, judging by the fact that we were attacked,” the President said.
Zelenskyy emphasized that Ukraine should have traded its nuclear weapons for genuine security assurances. According to him, if the country’s leadership had agreed to abandon nuclear weapons, it should have at least bagged real security guarantees by joining the NATO alliance. “It was stupid, absolutely stupid, illogical, and very irresponsible to change it this way… At that time, larger countries and bigger economies influenced Ukraine. It was not easy to refuse them,” he added.
The statement comes at a time when the war is at an inflection point for two reasons: One, Russian officials have communicated that a ban on Ukraine’s entry into NATO would be a precondition for ending the hostilities; Two, the military aid from the US is uncertain under Donald Trump’s administration. Additionally, the United States and other NATO members have also stopped short of supporting Ukraine’s membership in NATO.
Russia said on January 26 that its forces had taken control of a strategically significant town in eastern Ukraine as part of a grinding effort to erode Kyiv’s hold on the industrial core of the nation. Zelenskyy’s frustration is, thus, palpable.
Should Ukraine Not Have Given Up Nukes?
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine inherited one of the most powerful armies and the third-biggest nuclear arsenal in the world. However, it soon came under immense pressure to give them up—the US even threatened sanctions and isolation.
On December 5, 1994, Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum with the US, UK, and Russia and surrendered its sizable nuclear weapons arsenal in exchange for the assurance that the US, the UK, and Russia would not threaten Ukraine using economic or military means and vowed to respect its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
However, the decision has continued to haunt Ukraine ever since. On December 3, ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Budapest Memorandum, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement that said:
“The Budapest Memorandum failed to prevent the aggression of the Russian Federation, as a nuclear-weapon state, against Ukraine, as a state that has renounced its nuclear arsenal. Russia’s violation of the Budapest Memorandum set a dangerous precedent that undermined confidence in the very idea of nuclear disarmament. Instead, we see active attempts by various countries from the Indo-Pacific region and the Middle East to the Euro-Atlantic area to create or expand their existing nuclear arsenals.”
“Failure of the Budapest Memorandum to fulfill its functions has led to a catastrophic increase in security threats not only for Ukraine but also for other countries and regions…Today, the Budapest Memorandum is a monument to short-sightedness in strategic security decision-making,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry statement lamented at the time.
Ukrainians believe that placing their faith in an assurance signed off by Russia was a grave policy error. When confronted on violating the terms of the memorandum in 2014, the Russian Foreign Ministry said, “The security assurances were given to the legitimate government of Ukraine but not to the forces that came to power following the coup d’etat.” The statement referred to the coup against pro-Kremlin Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, which was allegedly orchestrated by the US.
Some Ukrainian officials have also pinned the blame for Russian attacks on the US and the UK, arguing that their assurances meant virtually nothing and did not prevent Russia from launching the attack. Andreas Umland, an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies (SCEEUS), wrote on X: “Thirty years ago, the United States persuaded Ukraine that it does not need nuclear weapons and gave Ukraine “security assurances.” Today, the United States is persuading Ukraine that it needs to give up territories, forget about NATO membership, and lower the conscription age.”
There is a widespread belief among Ukrainians that if the country possessed nuclear weapons, it would have deterred Russia from launching a full-scale invasion of the country.
However, some analysts believe that it would not have drastically changed Ukraine’s position. “Ukraine could have attacked some Russian nuclear weapons systems, but Russia would have retained surviving nuclear forces sufficient to devastate Ukraine. The reverse was not true. A Russian first strike could have destroyed the vast majority of the nuclear weapons in Ukraine, leaving Kyiv little with which to respond,” reads an excerpt from the article titled ‘Budapest Memorandum Myths’ published in the Centre for International Security and Cooperation.
Russia has the largest nuclear stockpile in the world. According to the Federation of American Scientists, Russia has a whopping 5,977 nuclear warheads. In contrast, Ukraine had inherited 1,500 to 2,100 strategic and 2,800 to 4,800 tactical warheads.
The author, Steven Pifer, also reckons that keeping nuclear weapons would have come at a massive cost for Ukraine. Pifer argues that if Ukraine decided to keep nuclear weapons, it would not have been able to deepen ties with the West and receive the economic, political, and military capital that it received from them over the years. “The United States and Europe would not have launched the large-scale assistance programs of the later 1990s to help Ukraine reform, modernize, and address specific problems such as shutting down the Chornobyl nuclear plant,” he adds.
Indian Army veteran and defense commentator Maj. Gen. Raj Mehta (retired) told EurAsian Times: “To possess nuclear weapons is important. More important, however, is the decision to use them as it involves Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). I think it remains a threat in being as neither holder nor attacker has or had the political will to use this weapon.”
Some believe that nuclear weapons would have prevented an invasion. Retired Indian Army Colonel S. Dinny told EurAsian Times: “If Ukraine was nuclear-armed, Russia would not have done what it has done because nuclear deterrence is a big factor. We have seen globally, that countries that have nuclear capability and even countries that have been acknowledged as unofficial nuclear states have not been conventionally challenged by any other nation. So, Ukraine would not have come under attack in case it was nuclear armed.”
There is also a debate on whether Ukraine would have been able to maintain, modernize, and expand its nuclear arsenal, given that it was going through an economically challenging time.
When asked whether keeping the nukes would have been economically feasible for Ukraine, Colonel Dinny further explained: “Both Russia and Ukraine were going through a period when their economies were not doing well. Regarding maintaining the arsenal, countries like Pakistan or North Korea that possess nuclear weapons are not economically stable, but they have still managed to develop nuclear capability.”
“Sustaining nuclear weapons is not something that Ukraine could not have handled. Lack of strategic foresight on the part of Ukrainian leadership has resulted in this war and the destruction of Ukrainian territory,” he added.
That said, the opinion remains divided on whether Ukraine’s relinquishing of nuclear weapons was a good idea or not. However, thirty years down the line, with enemies at its gate, Ukraine may not be wrong in regretting the decision to give up its nuclear weapons without a reliable security guarantee that could have prevented the war.
