They never had nukes.
Those were Soviet devices placed within a Soviet Socialist Republic called Ukraine. When we dock a submarine with nuclear capability out of port, those nuclear devices do not suddenly belong to the country in whose port they are docked.
Those devices needed to be sent back to Russia for the safety of Ukraine because maintenance required strictly Russian skill sets and nowhere else had them. Including the US. Beyond all of that, the launch codes did not reside in Ukraine.
At the very most you could make a case for extracting the materials and constructing your own bomb with them, but those were plutonium, not U235. Ukraine has had reactors for decades and the spent fuel rods contain some plutonium and they could extract that and build their own weapons.
But of course I don’t have the relevant skills which is why those original devices needed to be shipped out to begin with.
And so, the original sentence. They never had nukes.
Voice to text error. They don’t have the relevant skills.
Yes, they did have nukes. Quit acting foolish.
When the USSR died all materials in other lands were immediately controlled by that other land. Yeah, the successor can petition for recovery. But, possession = 9/10ths of law.
It was the Western powers that bribed Uk to surrendering its nukes. with assurances. Which are precisely the crappola you would expect.
As to getting sub nukes off board. No problem. Just reverse assembly. Don’t bother with delivery system, that is irrelevant. Use them as mines or put them in a truck.