The administration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky refuted a Bild article claiming that he was considering renewing the country’s nuclear arsenal.
Ukraine possessed the capabilities and information needed to develop nuclear weapons, German observer Julian Röpcke quoted an anonymous Ukrainian official as saying.
We have the material, we have the knowledge. If the order is given, we will only need a few weeks to have the first bomb. The West should think less about Russia’s red lines and more about our red lines.
During a speech at the European Council summit in Brussels on Thursday, Zelensky recalled that his country had agreed to give up Soviet nuclear weapons in Ukraine in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the US and the UK under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
Who gave up nuclear weapons? All of them? No. Ukraine. Who is fighting today? Ukraine. Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons and that will be our protection or we should have some sort of alliance. Apart from NATO, today we do not know any effective alliances.
Zelensky later explained that “we are not building nuclear weapons. What I meant is that today there is no stronger security guarantee for us besides NATO membership,” according to Politico.
On Wednesday, Zelensky presented his “victory plan” to end the war against Russia to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament). It included receiving an invitation to NATO and continued arms shipments to force Russia to the negotiating table.
However, Kyiv must get the approval of all 32 NATO members, whereas Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico vowed to block Ukraine’s accession as long as he was in office. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also called the victory plan “more than frightening.”
NATO promised Ukraine membership but did not set a date, disappointing Zelensky. He stated that “an immediate invitation to Ukraine to join NATO would be decisive” in the war against Russia. However, a security source in Ukraine told The Telegraph that Zelensky and his government were getting desperate.
There is an understanding that countries with nukes are treated differently. This is an existential conflict for Ukraine, something people in the West still don’t seem to get.
Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Studies, also said that a nuclear-armed Ukraine would only raise the risk of nuclear war.
How would a nuclear Ukraine deter nuclear Russia? How would nuclear weapons have helped Ukraine in Crimea? In eastern Ukraine? It’s not the magic wand people seem to think it is.
Previously, the Ukrainian authorities repeatedly expressed regret over Ukraine’s lack of nuclear weapons.
