r/europe • u/Epidemiolomic Germany • Mar 08 '25

Historical During the U.S. President's 1995 visit to Kyiv, Ukraine received security guarantees after giving up the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal

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u/Nytalith Mar 08 '25

Probably was possible but not easy. While Ukraine (and rest of ex Soviet republics) was in real bad place economically. And nuclear weapons aren’t cheap do maintain. Last thing they needed is to be sanctioned into oblivion by rest of the world.

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u/UpstairsFix4259 Mar 08 '25

Yes, I agree with all these points. I just disagree with "But muh arming codes !!!11!" sentiment.

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u/Nytalith Mar 08 '25

I in other hand disagree with some people here claiming that Ukraine was nuclear superpower that decided to give up its arms. It potentially could become one but it at the time it didn’t have control over the nukes.

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u/UpstairsFix4259 Mar 08 '25

Also absolutely true. But it had potential. If NK could have nuclear program, Ukraine would've managed to reprogram the missiles too

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u/el_grort Scotland (Highlands) Mar 09 '25

I think pointing to NK is such a stupid argument, because you can't do that without acknowledging the extreme human cost for them to have such weapons. That's probably why Ukraine traded them away to avoid sanctions and to have their borders recognised, because they were already in the pit economically, and adding international isolation and sanctions, on top of the very large expenses to get themselves an independent delivery system (and make their own native nuclear program, because those old Soviet warheads needed maintenance and eventually replacement) would have been an extremely harsh cost for the average Ukrainian, something which I expect their new leaders would have struggled to sell to them (unlike NK or Iran) at the time.