Ukraine gave up a giant nuclear arsenal 30 years ago. Today there are regrets.
Categories: FOREIGN COUNTRIES
At the end of the Cold War, the third-largest nuclear power on earth was not Britain, France or China. It was Ukraine. The Soviet collapse, a slow-motion downfall that culminated in December 1991, resulted in the newly independent Ukraine inheriting roughly 5,000 nuclear arms that Moscow had stationed on its soil. Underground silos on its military bases held long-range missiles that carried up to 10 thermonuclear warheads, each far stronger than the bomb that leveled Hiroshima. Only Russia and the United States had more weapons. The removal of this arsenal often gets hailed as a triumph of arms control. Diplomats and peace activists cast Ukraine as a model citizen in a world of would-be nuclear powers.“We gave away the capability for nothing,” said Andriy Zahorodniuk, a former defense minister of Ukraine. Referring to the security assurances Ukraine won in exchange for its nuclear arms, he added: “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.’” In January 1992, a month after the Soviet Union ceased to exist, Ukraine’s president and defense minister ordered military commanders and their men to pledge loyalty to the new country — a move that would exert administrative control over the remaining arms. Many refused, and the soldiers who managed Ukraine’s nuclear forces fell into a period of tense bewilderment over the fate of the arsenal and its operational status.“They’ve been fighting a low-grade war for eight years,” Pifer, who just returned from Kyiv, said of the Ukrainians. “You can’t find bullets in the stores. A lot of civilians are arming up.” In Ukraine, the Crimean invasion and the lengthy war led to a series of calls for atomic rearmament, according to Budjeryn, author of “Inheriting the Bomb,” a forthcoming book from Johns Hopkins University Press.In March 2014, Volodymyr Ohryzko, a former foreign minister, argued that Ukraine now had the moral and legal right to reestablish its nuclear status. In July, an ultranationalist parliamentary bloc introduced a bill for arsenal reacquisition. Later that year, a poll showed that public approval stood at nearly 50% for nuclear rearmament. Last year, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, said Kyiv might look to nuclear arms if it cannot become a member of NATO. “How else can we guarantee our defense?” Melnyk asked. The Foreign Ministry denied that such options were under consideration.“If a diplomatic solution is not achieved, it will reinforce the impression that nuclear-armed states can bully non-nuclear states” and thus “reduce the incentives” for disarmament, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington. Pifer argued in a 2019 analysis that the high costs of rearmament would ultimately include Ukraine finding itself alone in any crisis or confrontation with Russia.“A lot of countries are supportive of Ukraine,” he said of the current standoff. If, however, the nation went nuclear, Pifer added, “that support would dry up quickly.”