When and why did Ukraine give up its nuclear arsenal?
After the Soviet Union disintegrated, so many of its nuclear armaments were left on Ukrainian territory that Ukraine was briefly the world's third largest nuclear power. It found itself in possession of 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with 1,240 nuclear warheads, as well as 42 nuclear bombers with hundreds of nuclear cruise missiles and bombs stockpiled for them, and some 3,000 tactical nuclear weapons.
Although the list sounded impressive, the Ukrainian military really only had physical custody of the former Soviet nuclear arms, not access to the so-called permission action links (launching and retargeting codes). Operational control of the weapons remained in Moscow's hands.The Ukrainian governments of the early 1990s pursued an ambivalent course on the nuclear arms issue. On the one hand, Ukraine's possession of nuclear weapons could serve as a deterrent against increasingly assertive Russian foreign policy moves toward Ukraine. On the other, the economic collapse of the early 1990s left the young state in no position to maintain the aging Soviet nuclear arsenal. The United States saw the ambiguous Ukrainian position as jeopardizing international nuclear non-proliferation and threatening the implementation of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which reduced the American and Soviet nuclear arsenals by 80 percent. In order to force Ukraine into compliance, the US administration employed both diplomatic pressure and the threat of economic sanctions, while promising economic assistance.
In 1992 all tactical nuclear weapons were removed from Ukrainian territory to be disassembled in Russia. However, the Ukrainian authorities felt that they had been unfairly denied their share of the generous American financial compensation paid to Russia in exchange for weapons-grade uranium obtained from the discarded weapons.
Diplomatic relations between Ukraine and Russia also continued to deteriorate, with some Russian politicians voicing territorial claims on Ukraine. As a result, the Ukrainian government delayed both the transfer to Russia of its strategic nuclear warheads and accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while bargaining with the United States for compensation and security guarantees.A resolution was finally reached in 1994. First, the United States, Russia, and Ukraine signed a memorandum in Moscow, requiring the transfer of the remaining Ukrainian strategic warheads to Russia in exchange for Russian-made fuel for Ukrainian nuclear power stations, with the United States compensating Russia in cash. Then, on December 5, 1994, the United States, Russia, and Britain signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, which France and China also endorsed in separate official statements. In recognition of Ukraine's voluntary surrender of its nuclear weapons, the five major nuclear powers promised to “respect Ukraine's independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.“2 On the same day, Ukraine acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
All remaining nuclear weapons were removed from Ukraine by 1996, and by the end of the decade, missiles and silos were also destroyed as part of a separate US-funded program.
In 2014 Russia's annexation of the Crimea and its involvement in the Donbas war prompted public debates in Ukraine on the wisdom of giving up nuclear weapons in exchange for vague security guarantees. Nevertheless, Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko stated that his country would not seek to regain the status of a nuclear state. The United States and other Western countries condemned Russia's actions in Ukraine as a breach of international law, specifically Russia's obligations under the Budapest Memorandum.