In 1992, Western media called Ukraine “a savage with a nuclear mace.” In comparison, Russia turned out to be a country with nuclear potential.
Recently, the American magazine The National Interest published archival materials about how Washington forced Ukraine to give up nuclear weapons, despite the risk of Russian invasion.
The documents show “how two American administrations (Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton), top Pentagon officials, and NATO pressured Ukraine to give up its only deterrent against Russian aggression—nuclear weapons—despite the real risk of a Russian invasion.” .
The archival data presented in the publication also showed an absolutely superficial approach by the United States to the topic of new global problems that arose in connection with the collapse of the nuclear USSR and the disappearance of the so-called “bipolar balance” on which international politics and the world rested after World War II.
In this context, the recommendations of the last Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR and President of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze to President Kravchuk regarding our nuclear arsenal seem prophetic: “If Ukraine manages to retain at least one nuclear missile, as a deterrent for self-defense, it will be able to protect its independence and sovereignty from those crazy people in the Kremlin."
On November 18, 1993, the Ukrainian parliament ratified the START-I Treaty on the Reduction of Strategic Offensive Arms (START). By its law, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine obliged the executive branch to destroy only 36% of strategic missiles and 42% of nuclear warheads. Thus, President and Supreme Commander Kravchuk received a colossal nuclear and strategic arsenal to contain Russia’s imperial ambitions for many years. However, neither the friendly advice of Shevardnadze’s Georgian colleague nor the Law of Ukraine stopped the nuclear-free movement of the Ukrainian executive power according to the Kremlin scenario. More on this later.
In 1992-1994, I headed a special parliamentary commission that worked out a solution on nuclear disarmament, and was also the first head of the government delegation at the negotiations on the reduction of strategic offensive arms (December 1992-July 1993). Taking into account the materials from the American publication, it is necessary to make fundamental clarifications of the entire course of events regarding the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine so that the catastrophic mistakes of the past are not repeated in the terrible present - full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine, which also threatens the world with a nuclear apocalypse.
I can confirm that neither the United States, nor especially Ukraine, until the beginning of 1992, had their own vision of what to do with the nuclear arsenals of the USSR. As you know, the Ukrainian nuclear-free future appeared in the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine on July 16, 1990, when our state was still part of the USSR. It is also known that US President George W. Bush, less than a month before the declaration of Ukraine’s Independence, convinced deputies of the Verkhovna Rada to support Gorbachev’s “perestroika” and the integrity of the nuclear USSR. Thus, at that time, all nuclear strategies were solely generated by the Kremlin.
It is known that it was the Kremlin that recommended that the United States refrain from recognizing the independence of Ukraine until it accedes to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a nuclear-free country. The New York Times reported this in November 1992. However, the impressive result of the Ukrainian referendum on December 1, 1991, when more than 90% of Ukrainian citizens supported the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, broke the Kremlin’s plans and forced the Bush administration to recognize our state in December 1991.
The situation in the United States regarding Ukrainian nuclear weapons began to change due to the active cooperation of representatives of the democratic opposition of the Verkhovna Rada with American officials. This period is presented in detail in documents in my book “The History of Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine.” Already in December 1992, the Deputy Secretary of State conveyed to the Ukrainian Ambassador in Washington, Oleg Belorus, a proposal to President Kravchuk to move towards NATO membership instead of nuclear deterrence of Russia. “Nuclear weapons will not protect you from Russia; on the contrary, the issue of your security will become even more acute. The only guarantee of security is joining transatlantic structures.”
For its part, our parliamentary commission already in August 1992 published the results of work on developing its own nuclear disarmament strategy. I presented it in the form of a policy article “Nuclear weapons in Ukraine: good or evil. Political, legal and economic analysis of disarmament” (“Voice of Ukraine” August-September 1992).
The parliamentary program for Ukraine to acquire a nuclear-free status gave an unambiguous answer to key questions regarding nuclear arsenals, which constantly arose not only in the West, but also in the corridors of the Ukrainian executive power.
For the first time a clear answer was given:
According to international law, nuclear weapons are the property of Ukraine;
all countries of the world interested in this must finance the destruction of the world's third nuclear potential.
nuclear materials from warheads must be used for the needs of the nuclear energy industry of Ukraine.
It would be most expedient to replace nuclear weapons in Ukraine’s national security system with membership in the EU and NATO.
Guided by the provisions of this strategy, the Ukrainian parliament made all its further decisions to achieve a nuclear-free status. In particular, on June 3, 1993, at a closed parliamentary meeting, deputies overwhelmingly rejected President Kravchuk’s proposal for the immediate ratification of two treaties - START-I and the NPT, as a nuclear-free state.
Moreover, the statement of then Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma, which concluded the parliamentary debate, clearly supported the position of our commission.
In particular:
Ukraine is the owner of nuclear weapons
Ukraine is temporarily (until the destruction of all nuclear warheads) a nuclear power
Not the entire nuclear arsenal is subject to reduction, but 46 Ukrainian-made strategic missiles remain.
The issue of ratification of START-I and the NPT must be considered separately.
Despite the closed format of the parliamentary meeting, all Western media immediately began discussing the decision of the Verkhovna Rada. Prime Minister Kuchma's statement became a top topic in the world press.
The White House's reaction was lightning fast, and - what is important - was already fundamentally different from the Russian one. According to Western media reports, the United States is abandoning its policy of threats and isolation towards Ukraine, and is offering partnership on the topic of Ukraine gaining a nuclear-free status.
The first evidence of this change in US policy was the June 1993 visit of Defense Secretary Les Aspen to Kyiv. He offered the Ukrainian leadership the Pentagon’s assistance in separating nuclear warheads from strategic missiles and their further storage in Ukraine under international control. This was in line with parliamentary strategy.
Immediately after this visit, hearings were held in the US Senate on Ukrainian nuclear weapons (they were chaired by the current US President and then head of the Senate Committee, Joe Biden). They showed that Washington's position towards Ukraine has begun to change in accordance with the latest decisions of the Ukrainian parliament.
In July 1993, the Ukrainian parliamentary delegation in the United States was handed over a program of large-scale cooperation to promote nuclear disarmament in Ukraine. It was also fully consistent with parliamentary strategy and decisions and was fundamentally different from the Kremlin. Confirmation of such intentions of the new US administration was the agreement of Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin at the G-8 Summit in Tokyo (July 1993) to transfer negotiations between the government delegations of Ukraine and the Russian Federation on the topic of nuclear disarmament from a bilateral format to a trilateral format with the participation of the United States.
But, despite such a fundamental change in the West’s position on Ukraine’s nuclear policy, our executive branch, headed by President Kravchuk, continued to move according to the Kremlin scenario. And therefore, in September 1993, in Massandra (Crimea), with the participation of Presidents Kravchuk and Yeltsin, a number of intergovernmental agreements were signed on the transfer to the Russian Federation of all nuclear warheads, part of strategic delivery vehicles (missiles and strategic aircraft) and more than 90% of the Ukrainian Black Sea Fleet plus a base in Sevastopol.
New nuclear agreements were prepared by Deputy Prime Minister Valery Shmarov, who in July 1993 replaced me as head of the government delegation. President Kravchuk explained the reason for the replacement as follows: “Government negotiations on nuclear disarmament have reached a dead end.” In other words, I, as the head of the delegation, was removed from the negotiation process due to the fact that I was guided by the parliament’s strategy and not by the Kremlin’s guidelines.
This behavior of the Ukrainian executive branch fundamentally changed the mood of the White House. President Clinton again became an ally of Russia, not only on the topic of nuclear disarmament in Ukraine, but also on the new design of European security (the Russian-NATO Partnership for Peace program). It was announced during the NATO summit in Brussels on January 11, 1994, where Yeltsin was invited as an honorary guest.
But not only that. The new common argument that Russia and the United States most often used in putting pressure on Ukraine for nuclear disarmament was the thesis of reducing nuclear threats to the world. Therefore, at the instigation of Russia, the United States also agreed not only with the transfer to Moscow of all nuclear weapons of Ukraine instead of their destruction, as required by the decision of the Ukrainian parliament, but also with the proposal that a nuclear-free Ukraine would receive the Budapest Memorandum instead of legal guarantees of its security. The National Interest aptly noted that "The Budapest Agreement resembled a diplomatic shell game - transferring weapons from a weaker state to a stronger one (and with imperial pretensions) largely to assuage Russian uncertainty about achieving parity in its nuclear arsenal with respect to to the USA."
As further developments showed, the transfer of nuclear weapons by the Russian Federation to Ukraine led not only to the strengthening of its neo-imperial ambitions, but also to a significant increase in the likelihood of a nuclear apocalypse. As you know, the Doomsday Clock was last adjusted on January 23, 2023, with the hands set to 23:58:30. That is, one minute 30 seconds before a global catastrophe.
conclusions
On the morning of February 24, 2022, a new reality of the 21st century emerged. The second most nuclear-powered country in the world and one of the guarantors of the Budapest Memorandum began a large-scale war against democracy. And although Moscow dictator Putin calls his invasion of Ukraine a “special operation,” it is yet another global redistribution of influence between democracy and totalitarianism. The current horror of a new global war has completely refuted the erroneous thesis of those Western analysts who, in the early 90s of the last century, argued that a nuclear Ukraine is a threat to world stability, and not a deterrent to Russia’s neo-imperial ambitions.
Ukraine's nuclear disarmament did not result in an increase in global security. On the contrary, the principle of nuclear deterrence, on which the world rested after World War II, was completely destroyed. The era of a new race for nuclear superiority has begun, with the United States now single-handedly leading it.
In the context of the growing chaos of the international legal order and the increasing number of military conflicts engulfing the world, the arguments of those US politicians and analysts who continue to focus on the problem of the future of Russia rather than their own security seem extremely meaningless. For some reason, Putin’s defeat in Ukraine and the further collapse of the barbaric empire frightens them more than the threat of new wars, in which American soldiers, rather than Ukrainian defenders, will die.
And one last thing. The book “The History of Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine,” published in 2015, that is, a year after the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war, ends with results, the main thesis of which was the statement that the political mistake of the West was to underestimate new Russian threats after the collapse of the USSR. And this led to new global losses, and not to an increase in the level of world security.
The United States lost because it is not capable of ensuring stability in the world on its own. Diplomatic pressure and Western economic sanctions against Russia did not force Moscow to return Crimea to Ukraine and withdraw troops from the territories of the Ukrainian Donetsk and Lugansk regions. The United States did not dare to provide military assistance to Ukraine, fearing that this “neighborhood conflict” could escalate into a third world war.
Russia lost because the lack of strong democratic influence on the part of Ukraine in the region led to the formation of a regime that has never existed in the world. At the instigation of Russia in 1992, a number of Western publications called Ukraine “a savage with a nuclear mace.” Ironically, today few would argue that Russia is such a savage.
But Ukraine suffered the greatest losses. Billions of dollars in losses, flight of brains abroad, loss of economic opportunities, unjustified deterioration in living standards, collapse of the army and, most painfully, the loss of thousands of lives of Ukrainian patriots who died in the fight against the Russian aggressor and civilians who died from Russian shelling.
The year 2024 has begun. Putin’s war has entered a new phase - bloody battles, which the world has not seen for the last 70 years, have continued almost along the entire perimeter of the Ukrainian borders for two years. And not only. Nuclear terrorism, the methodical and total destruction of Ukrainian territories and civilian population is happening before the eyes of the whole world. And these are not terrible images of the past - this is the 21st century.
In this context, one question arises: is there somewhere that conditional red line for the West, crossing which the insane dictator Putin will finally feel the full power and advantages of democracy over totalitarianism?
Let me remind you that the US economy alone is 15 times more powerful than the Russian one, and representatives of 50 of the most developed democratic countries in the world are gathering in Ramstein, where they are coordinating the provision of military support to Ukraine. The total resources of which exceed the capabilities of the Kremlin dictator hundreds of times.
