Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament: A History

"At the start of the war, Russia violated a lot of treaties. One of the key ones was the Budapest Memorandum, signed in December 1994 with the United States, United Kingdom, Russia and Ukraine. There were also separate agreements that were signed with Kazakhstan and with Belarus. According to the agreements, these republics gave up the nuclear arsenals that they had inherited from the Soviet Union in exchange for, not guarantees, but ‘assurances’ by the three other powers of their sovereignty, the inviolability of their borders and so on. In 2014, Russia, one of the countries that gave those assurances—and to whom Ukraine transferred its nuclear arsenal—violated its territorial integrity and occupied Crimea. It is in that context that Kostenko writes this book, which is half memoir, half based on all the documents that he accumulated. It’s a really, really interesting story, almost unknown in the West. Ukraine was very reluctant to give up its nuclear arsenal, over which it had physical, but not operational control. Kazakhstan and Belarus were much more agreeable. Once again, Ukraine was a troublemaker, if you look at it from a Russian perspective. But everybody took the position that it was a good thing, a great success of denuclearization. “It was a miracle there was no major war or bloodshed” Kostenko provides a different perspective. It’s the first work in English with so much detail that goes against the mainstream, Western interpretation of that story. His argument is not that Ukraine should have kept nuclear weapons, but that Ukrainians were forced to give them up without getting proper guarantees of the country’s independence or adequate financial compensation. Nuclear weapons were Ukraine’s security, and they gave it up because the US and Russia were working together. This is a perspective that has received very little attention in the West and it is especially interesting because it comes from the mouth of someone who was right there, in the middle of the denuclearization process. You could also say, ‘Thank God the war now is not nuclear—because it could have been, if there had been no Budapest Memorandum.’ But one way or another, our understanding of the Budapest Memorandum and what is happening today is absolutely incomplete without this very important book. No, and that wasn’t his position in the 1990s. He was involved as Minister of Environmental Protection and Nuclear Safety; he also dealt with Chernobyl . What he is saying is that Ukraine was cheated out of its nukes. The price was wrong. The price should have been either membership in NATO or something else that was actually meaningful—that would save Ukraine from Russian aggression. What has happened to Ukraine since it was disarmed has and will have a negative impact on the global story of denuclearization. Countries are going to think twice next time someone comes along proposing to give them a piece of paper in exchange for their nuclear weapons. It’s a huge disincentive to denuclearize. That’s the global importance of this story, beyond just the current crisis."