Ukraine Once Possessed The World’s 3rd-Largest Stash Of Nuclear Weapons
by Harvey "Sluggo" Wasserman
Ukraine in 1994 traded the world’s third-largest stash of nuclear weapons for what it thought were reliable guarantees of their future security. Through what became known as the “Trilateral Process,” Ukraine got assurances from the US and Russia that by giving up its atomic bombs it had guaranteed its future security. But today, Putin’s Russia possesses the warheads Ukraine once owned. And there’s obviously no peace.
Here’s the back story: When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, much of its nuclear weapons arsenal was parked in Ukraine. The stash inherited by Kiev included enough atomic bombs and warheads— about 1,700— to make it the world’s third-largest atomic power.
Ukraine also housed more than a dozen Soviet-made nuclear power plants. Chernobyl Unit 4 had exploded in 1986, spewing radiation throughout Europe and worldwide. Significant “hot” fallout was detected in a bird sanctuary north of San Francisco within ten days, where recorded bird births dropped by 60% over the previous year. The cloud then travelled across the US to New England, where it was measured in milk. According to a 2007 report from the Russian Academy of Sciences, Chernobyl’s fallout had by then killed some 985,000 humans worldwide, with the death toll continuing to rise.
Chernobyl’s radioactive fallout decimated the economies of Ukraine and neighboring Belarus, costing each a half-trillion dollars by some estimates. Former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev cited the Chernobyl disaster as a prime cause of the fall of the USSR.
Amidst the post-Cold War movement to reduce the number of nuclear weapons on the planet, the Clinton Administration helped facilitate the 1994 negotiations between Kiev and Moscow aimed at securing those old warheads the fallen Soviets had left behind in Ukraine. Ukraine eventually gave the Russians about 1,700 nuke warheads. It also dismantled its ICBM missiles and their launch sites. Fellow former Soviet Republics Belarus and Kazakhstan followed suit. In return, the Americans and Russians allegedly guaranteed the Ukrainians their cooperation in protecting the peace.
The Ukrainians also received radioactive fuel for their remaining reactors. The UK, France and China all approved. The Budapest Memorandum was widely hailed as an historic step toward a post-nuclear world. But on December 31, 1999, Vladimir Putin took the reins in Russia. His puppet, Viktor Yanukovych, soon took control of Ukraine.
In 2004-5, the popular grassroots “Orange Revolution” forced Yanukovych from power. But in a bitterly contested election, amidst an economic downturn, Yanukovych took back power in 2010, ousting Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, Ukraine’s first female leader.
In 2014, amidst a legendary grassroots pro-western public uprising, Yanukovych appeared poised to sign an economic agreement with the European Union. But when he balked, the historic EuroMaidan movement erupted in the streets of Kiev. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians— branded as “Nazis” and western-funded “dupes” by Putin and his supporters— took to the streets in their “Revolution of Dignity.” After more than a hundred were killed in fierce, prolonged mass demonstrations, Yanukovych fled to Moscow.
In the wake of the chaos, Putin slipped troops into Crimea, later staging a Soviet-style “plebiscite” to certify Russian control. While keeping the nuclear weapons Russia got from Kiev in 1994, Putin billed Ukraine’s desire for deepened economic and military ties (including a possible alignment with NATO) as a “provocation.” In 2022, with infamous contempt for Ukrainian independence, Putin shredded the remnants of the nuclear disarmament agreement embodied in the Budapest Memorandum. Russian troops poured into the border provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk.
In both public and private. Putin made it clear that he expected to crush Ukraine in a matter of days. Russian soldiers invading Ukraine through its northern neighbor, Belarus, took control of the still-seething site at Chernobyl. The dangerously chaotic, bitterly disputed occupation threatened renewed disaster. An Iranian drone of the type used widely by the Russians recently hit the $2 billion sarcophagus that covers the site, significantly damaging the world’s largest movable structure.
Six Ukrainian reactors in war-torn Zaporizhzhia are currently controlled by Russia. Two Russian reactors sit perilously in Kursk, also a war zone. Military operations threatening these embattled reactors in these war zones pose an enormous risk to human survival. A single drone, operated by a single combatant, could easily cause another Chernobyl-sized catastrophe… or worse.
Overall, Putin and his supporters blame a “pro-Nazi” contingent within Ukraine threatens Russian security. As core justifications for his invasion, Putin cites Ukraine’s public support for an economic alliance with the European Union, or the possibility that Ukraine might join NATO. But while the war rages, on-and-off negotiations continue in the long shadow of those nuclear arms Ukraine thought it had traded for peace.
Today the Budapest Memorandum gets scant mention from the major media, or from those who apparently want that historical agreement permanently consigned to an Orwellian memory hole. That topic certainly got no mention from Donald Trump amidst his legendary Oval Office blow-up with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Meanwhile, the region’s murderous shift to drone warfare has radically altered the balance of battlefield power. Indeed, we’re now wondering whether drone-heavy Ukraine can hold off Putin’s nuke-ready Russians, with or without Trump’s unreliable assurances.
The Budapest Memorandum marked history’s largest surrender of nuclear weapons by one country to another. It long stood as a beacon for humankind’s escape from the apocalyptic shadow of nuclear war. But today it gets virtually no mention amidst Putin’s relentless assault on the beleaguered nation that gave them up in good faith.