[Robert DeLong]

Again, that had no affect on Ukraine's ability to neuter Putin or Russia. For they were useless to them. Just for the record it was Clinton that was involved in that in 1994. Bush I served from 1989-1992.

U.S. President Clinton, Russian President Yeltsin, and Ukrainian President Kravchuk after signing the Trilateral Statement in Moscow on 14 January 1994.

The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances comprises four substantially identical political agreements signed at the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) in Budapest, Hungary, on 5 December 1994, to provide security assurances by its signatories relating to the accession of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The four memoranda were originally signed by four nuclear powers: Ukraine, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

[Carry_Okie]

Just for the record it was Clinton that was involved in that in 1994. Bush I served from 1989-1992.

Memory hadn't failed me. Clinton concluded what Bush had started:

At a Dec. 21, 1991 conference at Alma-Ata, the Soviet Republics of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine pledged to return all Soviet tactical nuclear weapons on their territories to Russia by July 1, 1992. All three states met their commitments despite the Soviet Union’s breakup four days after these pledges were made. Otherwise, Russia has released little information substantiating its PNI activities. At the May 2005 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference, Moscow announced that all Russian tactical nuclear weapons “are now deployed only within the national territory and are concentrated at central storage facilities of the Ministry of Defense.” In 2007, Colonel-General Vladimir Verkhovtsev remarked, “Russia particularly committed itself to removing tactical nuclear weapons from the ground forces completely. Those weapons were also cut by 50 percent in the Air Force, by 60 percent in missile defense troops and by 30 percent on nuclear submarines of the Russian Navy,” the general said.