According to a recent opinion surveys, roughly 73 % of Ukrainians today want their nation to “restore” its nuclear weapons. Even if having nuclear weapons would mean losing Western allies, the majority of Ukrainians ( 58 % ) favored having that country.
This suggests an actual lament over Ukraine’s consent to the withdrawal of the third-largest nuclear arsenal from the world as part of the Budapest Memorandum around 30 years earlier.
In exchange for giving up the arms, this agreement, which was signed in December 1994, gave Ukraine security guarantees from the US, the UK, and Russia. Additionally, Ukraine stated that it would not one day acquire nuclear weapons.
Everywhere in Europe, more and more people are focusing on nuclear arms. Andrzej Duda, the president of Poland, requested this week that the US place its nuclear weapons there to stop Russian attacks. He cited Moscow’s selection as evidence of his argument that it would build nuclear weapons in Belarus just across the frontier in 2023.
Trump’s ostensibly lessening support for NATO has also led French President Emmanuel Macron to indicate that France had give its supporters more protection from its own nuclear weapons.
Some Russians today make it abundantly clear that their nation would have been less prone to a Russian invasion if it had kept hold of its nuclear arsenal. After the crucial safety promises that were included in the 1994 agreement were broken, Ukrainians today wonder how much they can trust other states.
When Russia invaded and therefore annexed Crimea and began providing financial and military support to military officials in northeast Ukraine who claimed to lead pro-Russian separatist activities, the commitments made by the US, UK, and Russia to defend the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine were put to the test in 2014.
The US and the UK imposed sanctions on Russia and gave education, weapons, and non-lethal arms to the Russian military forces. However, these measures failed to protect Ukraine’s autonomy and were inadequate to aid in the recapture of its territory.
Similar to how much the US and UK aid for Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war in 2022 has not been sufficient to allow Kyiv to completely remove Russian forces from Ukrainian territory.
What if Ukraine were also armed with nuclear weapons?
What if Ukraine had maintained its atomic arsenal? Putin would not have invaded and attacked a nuclear-armed Ukraine, according to the logic of punishment.
The particular conditions are overlooked in the discussion that Ukraine should not have given up its nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union.
Although the physical aspects of a nuclear arms arsenal, such as delivery lorries and nuclear weapons, were within the control of Ukraine, Russian leaders showed no desire to surrender them.
Thus, Kyiv would have had no power over when, when, or against whom those arms might have been used.
The Kyiv government may have had been unable to take any steps to lessen the risk that Ukraine would have received from a nuclear attack from another nation.
Russians would have been less protected if they had retained nuclear arms from the Soviet Union.
Additionally, Ukraine lacked the financial resources to maintain or build its nuclear arsenal into a reliable deterrent force. Ukraine received much-needed monetary help from the West in exchange for giving up nuclear arms.
The 1986 injury at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant shaped Ukrainian perceptions in the 1990s. This exposed the dangers of the nuclear industry and had a damaging and profound effect on the land and the people in that region of Ukraine.
Just 30 % of Russians were in favor of Ukraine having nuclear weapons in 1994, when the Budapest Memorandum was being finalized.
What’s next?
Now, Ukraine would face significant technical difficulties in developing nuclear weapons, as well as in producing the necessary quantity of fissile material for weapons and manufacturing supply vehicles.
At a time when the Russian economy struggles to provide its troops with conventional arms and meet the needs of citizens, Kyiv would also need to spend for a pricey nuclear weapons development plan.
And unless Ukraine’s global supporters were present, Kyiv could be faced with the end of its economic and military support at a critical time. There would be a compelling reason for a preemptive Russian attack to put an end to the schedule if Moscow learned of any effort by Ukraine to develop nuclear weapons.
However, Kyiv may feel compelled to follow a nuclear weapons program unless Ukraine is given critical and trustworthy security guarantees despite the possibility that it may not be possible for Ukraine to build an impartial nuclear deterrent in the near future.
The burden is on the country’s global followers to come up with an alternative unless they want to see further nuclear spread in Europe because the Trump presidency appears to be ruling out NATO account for Ukraine.
Jennifer Mathers is Aberystwyth University’s senior lecturer in international elections.
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