The West believed that democratic Russia under Yeltsin was on the right path and could be entrusted with the “nuclear power”
Exactly 30 years ago – on January 14, 1994 – an event took place in Moscow that turned out to be on the periphery of the well-known and unfortunate Budapest Memorandum of December 5, 1994 for Ukrainian diplomacy and our state as a whole.. Which put an end to the “nuclear” history of Ukraine.
A trilateral meeting of the leaders of the United States, Russia and Ukraine took place in the Moscow Kremlin. Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk signed a statement depriving Ukraine of its nuclear status: “All nuclear warheads will be removed from the territory of Ukraine to Russia for their subsequent dismantling in the shortest possible time.”
At the same time, an agreement was signed on the refusal of the Russian Federation and the United States to mutually target strategic nuclear missiles, which was called the Moscow Declaration. And a month later – on February 15, 1994 – the governments of Russia and Great Britain adopted the same agreement.
After the meeting of the three presidents in Moscow, Kyiv pledged to remove strategic nuclear weapons to the Russian Federation as soon as possible. The latter agreed to compensation to Ukraine. Can we say that Washington and Moscow “twisted the arms” of Kyiv? Yes and no. Much depended on our position and the skill of Ukrainian diplomats and lawyers.
In the early 1990s, Ukraine had the third most powerful nuclear potential in the world
The provision of security guarantees to Ukraine by three nuclear powers – the USA, Great Britain and Russia – at the Budapest meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe turned out to be a soap bubble. After all, these guarantees were not spelled out.
You can discuss the interpretation of words in the Budapest Memorandum as much as you like. For example, in the Ukrainian and Russian versions “guarantees” are mentioned, and in English – “assurances” that have nothing to do with guarantees. As a result, we have what we have: a large-scale war is going on in Ukraine, unleashed by one of the signatories of the document – Russia.
The West was not ready to enter into conflict with the Kremlin and bears moral responsibility for the fact that the document turned out to be just a piece of paper. Legally, this is also a piece of paper, because there are no mechanisms for assistance, including military assistance, to Ukraine in the event of a conflict.. The Budapest Memorandum was signed by the new President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, elected in July 1994.
However, let's go back a little, to the time of the final collapse of the Soviet Union.. It can be said unequivocally that strategic nuclear weapons were not as important as a deterrent as tactical ones.. Which Ukraine got rid of in May 1992. By the way, agreement on its removal was recorded during the Minsk Agreement of December 30, 1991, signed by the heads of the CIS states. According to this document, literally all nuclear weapons were to be concentrated in the Russian Federation.
In the early 1990s, Ukraine had the third most powerful nuclear potential in the world, so Western countries believed that it would be better if nuclear weapons were in the same hands, in this case, Russia. Numerous Soviet experts, who “slept through” the death of the USSR, were now trying to rehabilitate themselves.
In their opinion, democratic Russia under Yeltsin was on the right path (after the pacification of the obstinate communist-fascist parliament in Moscow on October 4, 1993), and this calmed the collective West. The fact that the “pacification” of parliament took place in the best cannibalistic Russian traditions – with tanks – did not bother the West. The only thing the Ukrainians achieved during difficult negotiations was compensation for the cost of removed nuclear weapons.
Ahead were Chechnya, explosions in houses, Budennovsk, the coming to power of the FSB corporation headed by Putin in 2000…
In 1995-1996. 1,270 nuclear warheads were transported from Ukraine to Russia
At the beginning of Russia’s large-scale war against Ukraine, the Kremlin dictator transfers the strategic nuclear forces of the Russian Federation to a special regime, and exactly a year later, on February 22, 2023, the State Duma passes a law suspending Russia’s participation in the nuclear agreement regarding strategic offensive weapons (START-3). Pandora's box was not only opened, the lid was also thrown into the dustbin of History.
Tactical nuclear weapons (air bombs with nuclear warheads with a yield of several kilotons, artillery shells), a large part of which were contained in Ukraine until the early 1990s, could be used at a distance of up to a thousand kilometers. Potentially, it could not be a threat to Western countries, but it would be an ideal deterrent against possible aggression. And definitely – in the event of an attack on Ukraine by its northeastern neighbor.
As a result of the agreements in Moscow on January 14, 1994, Ukraine reaffirmed its renunciation of nuclear weapons. Its territorial integrity within the borders of the former Ukrainian SSR was also emphasized. It was separately noted that by the end of the year Kyiv must remove 200 nuclear warheads for SS-19 and SS-24 missiles.
Moscow pledged to supply 100 tons of low-enriched uranium for nuclear power plants in Ukraine. The United States provided economic assistance to Kyiv in the amount of $175 million. In November 1994, Ukraine acceded to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Next was the inevitable path to Budapest…
In 1995-1996. 1,270 nuclear warheads were transported from Ukraine to Russia. At the same time, the means of their delivery were eliminated and the infrastructure related to the military nuclear program was destroyed.. The last warhead was removed from Ukrainian territory on June 2, 1996.
“When I hear about 'safety guarantees', I am very skeptical about it. Do you remember that in 1994 there was the Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia and Western states guaranteed Ukraine: if it renounces its nuclear weapons, it will receive guarantees of its security, national sovereignty, and territorial integrity. And look what happened. And this, as you know, was also done by NATO allies. That is, the guarantees [from the G7 countries] are only the second test, so as not to think that they have not passed the first,” Christoph Heusgen, head of the Munich Security Conference, said in a commentary to Bloomberg in the summer of 2023.
Was the abandonment of the nuclear “sword” a fatal mistake by the Ukrainian leadership? Would we be able to maintain nuclear weapons, because, according to the already deceased first president Leonid Kravchuk, their service life expired in 1997. Hard to say.
Some say Ukraine could blackmail the world and not give up its nuclear weapons. But this is complete nonsense. We would have seen Russian tanks in Ukraine much earlier than 2014. And now politicians, diplomats, and specialists continue to break their spears, trying to justify their often diametrically opposed positions on this issue.. But this is more of an “if-logy” that doesn’t make any sense.