Why Did Ukraine Give Up Its Nuclear Weapons?

On December 26, 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world’s second-largest superpower and flagship for state communism for 74 years, suddenly ceased to exist. The Cold War, the four-decade- long ideological struggle between East and West, was finally over. But while December 26 marked the official birth of the newly-democratic Russian Federation, the dissolution of the Soviet Union had been a chaotic, drawn-out affair, fuelled by decades of economic stagnation, the attempted reforms of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, independence movements in the Soviet republics, and countless other factors. In the process, 18 former Soviet republics and satellite states found themselves newly independent: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. For Ukraine, the transition to independence was particularly dramatic, as it left the nation in possession of thousands of formerly Soviet nuclear weapons. Yet within five years Ukraine had rid itself of all these weapons and signed the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty. But what led Ukraine to give up such an overwhelming strategic advantage, and what does this decision mean for a nation once again facing invasion and occupation by Russia?

Ukraine has long been a key strategic asset in Russian and later Soviet global affairs, being both the breadbasket of Eastern Europe and home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet at Sebastopol. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union also stationed large numbers of nuclear weapons in the region for use against targets both in Europe and North America. At the time of Ukraine’s independence on July 16, 1990, these numbered some 1,700 warheads divided among various delivery systems, including 33 strategic bombers and 130 UR-100N Stiletto and 46 RT-23 Molodets intercontinental ballistic missiles. This effectively made Ukraine the third-largest nuclear power on earth after the United States and Russia.

Nonetheless, for a while these weapons still remained under the control of the Soviet military. But when the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, the political status of Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal suddenly became uncertain. In January 1992, Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk ordered military commanders in charge of nuclear forces to pledge loyalty to the newly-independent Ukraine, which would give Kyiv administrative control over the weapons. However, many commanders refused, plunging Ukraine into a period of tense confusion and political debate regarding the nation’s future as a nuclear-armed nation. On May 23, 1992, Ukraine, along with former Soviet republics Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, signed the Lisbon Protocol, which under the terms of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty or START restricted signatories from deploying more than 6,000 nuclear warheads and 1,600 bombers or intercontinental ballistic missiles. Internally, however, Ukraine had little intention of complying with theProtocol, with many in the government pushing for the country to retain nuclear capability as a safeguard against future invasion and occupation. Despite the United States Government pledging $175 million towards disarmament efforts, in early 1993 Kyiv claimed national ownership of its former Soviet weapons and began implementing administrative control over the arsenal.

Ultimately, however, Ukraine concluded that the costs of maintaining nuclear status far outweighed any potential benefits. While Ukraine maintained extensive facilities for designing, building, and maintaining aircraft and ballistic missiles, it had no nuclear production capabilities of its own and would have had great difficulty maintaining and replacing its warhead stockpile. The command and control infrastructure for launching its nuclear weapons was also based entirely in Russia. It would thus have taken Ukraine years and millions of dollars to bring its inherited arsenal under full operational control – an expense the nation’s shaky post-independence economy could scarcely afford. Furthermore, the arsenal itself was of limited use as a deterrent against Russia, for the UR-100N and RT-23 missiles had a minimum range of 5,000 to 10,000 kilometres and could only be targeted against Russia’s far eastern regions. Most importantly, however, a nuclear-armed Ukraine would likely have faced sanctions or withdrawal of diplomatic recognition from the United States and other NATO countries, or provoked retaliation by Russia – the very thing the arsenal was meant to prevent.

Thus, in April 1993, a group of 162 Ukrainian politicians submitted 13 preconditions for ratifying the START treaty, including assurance of national sovereignty and security from Russia and the United States, international assistance for weapons dismantlement, and financial compensation for all weapons-grade Uranium and Plutonium surrendered. Furthermore, Kyiv stated that it would dismantle only 42% of its warheads and 36% of its missiles, with the rest remaining under Ukrainian control. Russia and the United States balked at these demands, but Ukraine held firm, leading to a temporary breakdown in negotiations. Eventually, however, an American offer of additional financial assistance for dismantlement changed Kyiv’s mind, and on January 14, 1994, Ukraine signed the Trilateral Statement agreeing to full nuclear disarmament. This was followed on February 3 by Ukraine’s ratification of the START treaty, and on December 5 by the signing of the Budapest Memorandum, which read in part:

“The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,

Welcoming the accession of Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as non-nuclear-weapon State,

Taking into account the commitment of Ukraine to eliminate all nuclear weapons from its territory within a specified period of time…

Confirm the following:

1. …their commitment… to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.

2. … their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.

3. … their commitment… to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

4. … their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon State party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.

5. …their commitment not to use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear-weapon State party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, except in the case of an attack on themselves, their territories or dependent territories, their armed forces, or their allies, by such a State in association or alliance with a nuclear-weapon State.”

The Budapest Memorandum gave Ukraine 7 years to completely disarm, and by 2001 – one year ahead of schedule – all warheads and missiles had been dismantled and returned to Russia and all missile silos decommissioned. This made Ukraine the first – and thus far only – nation to give up a functioning nuclear arsenal. The only exception to Ukraine’s status as a nuclear-free nation were a handful of nuclear-armed ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, based at Sebastopol under a strategic agreement between the two nations.

But while total disarmament may have seemed the most economically and politically prudent move in 1994, recent acts of Russian aggression have led many to reconsider this fateful decision. Among those who have expressed betrayal at the hands of Russia and the other Budapest Memorandum signatories is former Ukrainian defence minister Andriy Zahorodniuk, who stated:

“We gave away the capability for nothing. Now, every time somebody offers us to sign a strip of paper, the response is, ‘Thank you very much. We already had one of those some time ago.’”

These sentiments echo those of former missile base commander Volodymyr Tolubko, who upon his election to the Ukrainian parliament in 1992, told the assembly that total disarmament was “romantic and premature” and that Ukraine should maintain at least a residual missile force to “deter any aggressor.” The following year, John Mearsheimer, an international relations theorist at the University of Chicago, concurred that Ukraine maintaining a nuclear arsenal was “imperative” to ensure that:

“…[the Russians], who have a history of bad relations with Ukraine, do not move to reconquer it.”

Following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, the cause of nuclear rearmament began to be taken up by more and more mainstream politicians, including former foreign minister Volodymyr Ohryzko, who in March 2014 stated that Ukraine had the moral and legal right to reestablish its nuclear status. That July, an ultranationalist parliamentary bloc introduced a bill for nuclear rearmament, while a poll conducted later that year found that nearly 50% of the Ukrainian population supported the reestablishment of a nuclear arsenal. More recently in 2021, Andriy Melnyk , Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, stated that Kyiv would consider nuclear rearmament if its bid to join NATO was rejected – though the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry later denied Melnyk’s claims.

Skeptics of Ukraine’s disarmament point to numerous examples of nations who gave up weapons of mass destruction only to be subsequently betrayed and invaded. For instance, in 2003 Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi agreed to abandon his nuclear and chemical weapons programs in exchange for improved diplomatic and economic relations with the West, even going so far as to allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors into the country. Yet despite this show of good faith, following the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, Western nations provided air support and other military aid to anti-government forces, ultimately leading to Gaddafi’s death and the collapse of his government. Similarly, in 2015 the Islamic Republic of Iran signed a deal with the Obama administration agreeing to extensive international oversight of its civilian nuclear program. Barely one year later, however, the administration of newly-elected president Donald Trump reneged on this agreement, hitting Iran with crushing economic sanctions and launching a campaign of targeted assassinations against its military leaders.

Standing in stark contrast to these examples is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which by stubbornly clinging to its nuclear arsenal, rearmament proponents argue, has succeeded in rising from pariah state to a valued security partner of the United States.

Many experts, however, are skeptical of this view, arguing that the instability of Libya and Iran and the ongoing security of Pakistan and North Korea are due to multiple complex factors unrelated to nuclear weapons. Nonetheless, the notion that nuclear weapons guarantee security continues to gain traction in Ukraine, as Mariana Budjeryn, an expert on Ukraine at Harvard University, explained in 2022:

“The gist is, ‘We had the weapons, gave them up and now look what’s happening.’ On a policy level, I see no movement toward any kind of reconsideration. But on a popular level, that’s the narrative.”

Indeed, not only would nuclear rearmament be financially costly for a nation already fighting for its survival, but it would also likely cost Ukraine dearly on the world diplomatic stage, as former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer argues:

“A lot of countries are supportive of Ukraine, [but if it went nuclear], that support would dry up quickly.”

But even if Kyiv is not seriously considering rearmament, experts worry that the rising popularity of the pro-nuclear argument combined with international inaction against the Russian invasion might send the wrong message to nations considering the acquisition of nuclear arsenals. As Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, stated in 2022:

“If a diplomatic solution is not achieved, it will reinforce the impression that nuclear-armed states can bully nonnuclear states.”

Mariana Budjeryn agrees, arguing that:

“[It] really doesn’t look good for the international non-proliferation regime. Because if you have a country that disarms and then becomes a target of such a threat and a victim of such a threat at the hands of a nuclear-armed country, it just sends a really wrong signal to other countries that might want to pursue nuclear weapons.”

However, she remains confident that Ukraine made the right decision in 1994:

“I would say, after having researched this topic for nearly a decade, Ukraine did the right thing at the time. It did the right thing by itself, and also by the international community. It reduced the overall number of nuclear weapons in the world and that makes everyone safer. Now, looking at this history, however, the guarantors — the signatories of the Budapest Memorandum especially but also the international community more broadly — needs to react in the way as to not make Ukraine doubt in the rightness of that decision.”

For now, only time will tell whether the other signatories of the Budapest Memorandum will make good on their promise to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty and security, or whether Ukraine will find itself forever regretting its decision to become a non-nuclear nation. Sláva Ukrayíni.

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