The Nuclear Regret Gnawing At War-Wrecked Ukraine

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The pledges by the US, UK and Russia to protect the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine were put to the test in 2014 when Russia invaded and then annexed Crimea and began providing financial and military backing for militia leaders in eastern Ukraine who claimed to lead pro-Russian separatist movements.

The US and UK imposed economic sanctions against Russia and provided training, equipment and non-lethal weapons to the Ukrainian armed forces . But these measures fell well short of ensuring Ukraine's sovereignty and were insufficient to help Ukraine retake its territory.

Similarly, US and UK support for Ukraine since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022 , although valuable and much appreciated by the Ukrainians, has not been enough to allow Kyiv to completely expel Russian troops from Ukrainian territory.

What was the Budapest Memorandum?What if Ukraine still had nuclear weapons?

But what if Ukraine had never given up its nuclear weapons? The logic of deterrence suggests that Putin would not have invaded and attacked a nuclear-armed Ukraine.

But the argument that Ukraine should not have surrendered the Soviet nuclear weapons on its territory overlooks the specific circumstances.

For while physical components of a nuclear weapons capability – delivery vehicles and nuclear warheads – were within Ukraine's grasp, the launch codes remained in Moscow , and Russian leaders showed no willingness to relinquish them.

So, Kyiv would have had no control over whether, when or against whom those weapons might have been used.

The risk to Ukraine of becoming the target of another state's nuclear strike would have been considerable, and the Kyiv government would have been unable to do anything to reduce that risk.

Retaining nuclear weapons left over from the Soviet period would have probably made Ukrainians less rather than more secure.

Ukraine also lacked the economic resources to maintain the nuclear weapons on its territory or develop them into a credible deterrent force. In exchange for giving up nuclear weapons, Ukraine received much-needed economic assistance from the West.

In the 1990s Ukrainian views were shaped by the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. This had a devastating and lasting impact on the land and the people in that part of Ukraine, highlighting the risks of the nuclear sector.

In 1994, when the Budapest Memorandum was being negotiated, only 30% of Ukrainians were in favor of Ukraine possessing nuclear weapons.

What now?

Ukraine would face considerable technical challenges in developing nuclear weapons today, both in creating the necessary quantities of fissile material for warheads and manufacturing delivery vehicles.