The Ukrainians were naive to believe Clinton and the US in the’90s about security guarantees when they gave up their nukes after the fall of the USSR. If they had nukes now, there would be no invasion. But that’s neither here nor there - we are already squandering billions of taxpayer dollars on Ukraine, and we can’t do this forever. Nor will we actively work to overthrow Putin. This is Western Europe’s problem far more than it is ours - if Germany and France want to step up and fund Ukraine’s defense, more power to them.
O have read that the Ukranian nukes were not usable to the Ukranians if the had tried to keep them after the Soviet fall. True?
Your information is in error.
The Soviet weapons on Ukraine territory were functional only with the activation codes that existed only in Moscow. Additionally, those nukes required enormous maintenance the expertise for which also existed only in Moscow.
All parties globally wanted those weapons sent to Moscow before some accident occurred and killed 10s of 1000s of Ukrainians.
Bottom line — Ukraine never had those nukes. They resided on Ukraine territory but had no use there. They did not send them to Russia in return for any sort of promises. They sent them to Russia in order to get rid of them before they killed people.
And the point is all moot. That material in those nukes has decayed by now and is no use to anyone.
At every turn, it's been us and NATO that thwarted peace, including in March of 2022 when a peace deal was nearly reached and squashed by Boris Johnson.