Yes: They could have kept their freakin' nuclear weapons!
Seriously: What country bordering Russia could be so stupid as to get rid of their nuclear arsenal on the basis of a mere "assurance?"
Regards,
“What country bordering Russia could be so stupid as to get rid of their nuclear arsenal on the basis of a mere “assurance?”
Complicated answer.
1. Although Ukraine voted overwhelmingly for independence and a new future not based on the Soviet Union, 70% of the country had historical, familial or cultural ties to Russia. Putin isn’t wrong to say that Belarus, Ukraine and Russia are effectively three brothers.
2. Despite #1, Ukraine only has to look North at the basket case that is Belarus to see what Putin wanted Ukraine to be. No matter how brotherly they are, they don’t want what Putin offers.
3. The Budapest Memorandum was signed before Putin, Dugin and Zhirinovsky brought their misty-eyed ethnonationalist empire restoration fantasy into play.
4. At the time both Russia and Ukraine appeared to be inclined towards embracing western reforms and having a lot of fun transitioning out of the 70s.
Btw: The genocide trigger for the Special Military Operation is a total fiction. Even the DPR, on their own website, say the genocide ended three years ago.
Sporadic fighting between the mercenaries and separatists on one side, and Azov Nazis on the other, was ongoing but it had reduced to a turf war between two groups of fanatics, and barely touched the Russian speaking general population. For 3 years straight, civilian deaths didn’t exceed 27 in any calendar year.
If Putin really paid attention to the DPR, he’d have invaded before 2016 when the fighting was FIFTY TIMES MORE INTENSE than it was by December 2021.
“Seriously: What country bordering Russia could be so stupid as to get rid of their nuclear arsenal on the basis of a mere “assurance?”
Ukraine never had the launch codes for those nuclear missiles, so they weren’t going to do them any good anyway.