Posted on 03/01/2025 3:22:25 PM PST by NoLibZone
Under heavy grey skies and a thin coating of snow, hulking grey and green Cold War relics recall Ukraine’s Soviet past.
Missiles, launchers and transporters stand as monuments to an era when Ukraine played a key role in the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons programme - its ultimate line of defence.
As a newly independent Ukraine emerged from under Moscow’s shadow in the early 1990s, Kyiv turned its back on nuclear weapons.
But nearly three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, and with no clear agreement among allies on how to guarantee Ukraine’s security when the war ends, many now feel that was a mistake.
Thirty years ago, on 5 December 1994, at a ceremony in Budapest, Ukraine joined Belarus and Kazakhstan in giving up their nuclear arsenals in return for security guarantees from the United States, the UK, France, China and Russia.
Strictly speaking, the missiles belonged to the Soviet Union, not to its newly independent former republics.
But a third of the USSR’s nuclear stockpile was located on Ukrainian soil, and handing over the weapons was regarded as a significant moment, worthy of international recognition.
“The pledges on security assurances that [we] have given these three nations…underscore our commitment to the independence, the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of these states,” then US President Bill Clinton said in Budapest.
As a young graduate of a military academy in Kharkiv, Oleksandr Sushchenko arrived at Pervomais’k two years later, just as the process of decommissioning was getting under way.
He watched as the missiles were taken away and the silos blown up. Now he’s back at the base as one of the museum’s curators.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
I don’t think it’s that hard to make a nuclear device go boom. Physical possession of one is not as trivial as some here make it out to be. Otherwise, why do we care if one “falls in the wrong hands”? Ukrainian politicians were just as corrupt back then as they are now. They simply sold their nation for a few pieces of silver.
It failed to be one after the Maiden coup.
It’s a good question and if Zelensky had brought that up with Trump it would’ve been a much better bargaining position. Instead he wimped out and whined about money and more US money.
Because the Poles, Baltics, Finns and Swedes (among others) say Russia is as***le.
Ukraine's mistake. But to be fair, they didn't have their act together in the '90s.
Because “politically neutral” meant something different to Putin than the majority of the Ukrainians. Ukraine wanted to join the EU, Putin wanted them in his own arrangement.
Ukrainian (ex Soviet) officers had (some) of the keys. These were the only tools needed to release the nuke locks.
The codes etc were only used to inform the officers in command that the orders were legit. Otherwise keys.
There’s no reason the locks to a bunch of tactical warheads couldn’t have been removed.
Out of about 1700 weapons, approximately 80 are "unaccounted for". The exact numbers vary depending on which source you believe.
Nuclear weapons have a limited shelf life before they must be rebuilt. By now, none of the weapons that were in the Ukraine are still operable as fission bombs. They could still make quite a contamination mess to the surroundings if they were set on fire.
A large number of nukes were present in Ukraine. The Soviet Union was done, replaced by its successors. Everyone (the West, collectively) had agreed that Russia would inherit the lot no matter where they were.
But there was no technical system in place to enforce this.
“They were Russian nukes, and they were in no position to keep them, fall of ‘soviet union’ or not.”
Why not? What “position” is this?
The Ukrainian leadership was persuaded that they could hand them all to Russia with no consequences. But that was a matter of persuasion, not some technical problem.
“Uk’s shouldn’t have trusted a Democrat.”
This is profoundly true.
I fear that you may be right. What will happen when the UK and France commit suicide and become Islamic states? I can only hope that nuclear weapons are gone before that happens.
That was Bill Clinton, and Donald M. Blinken, Antony Blinken’s father, who at the time was Ambassador to Hungary.
“They weren’t Ukrainian nuclear weapons in the first place.”
And some Ukrainian politicians could easily have said “They are now.”
the united states has been giving up its nuclear weapons for years... where’s your outrage about that situation?...
The truth doesn’t matter. The Ukrainian nuke lie will continue.
Wait until Erdogan pulls out of NATO. The traffickers of this Uke nonsense will sing a different tune when Turkey wants to keep IT’S nukes it has had at Incirlik for sixty years.
Wait! We no longer have nuclear weapons?
But they didn't.
I expect there were conversations along those lines. But the Ukraine military had absolutely no capability to maintain or control nuclear weapons. They had been traumatized by the Chernobyl fiasco and seemed really happy at the time to let Russia pay to dispose of the weapons.
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