"Give us our Nukes Back"

"Give us our Nukes Back"

How Three Decades of Internal Misrepresentation in Ukraine has Led to a National Sense of Entitlement

By Joe Blank



In August of 1991, as communism fell, Ukraine formally declared itself as a sovereign nation. It's a well-known fact that each of the former 15 republics faced political and economic challenges in their shift to a free-market economy, some taking the shock to their systems much better than others, such as the Baltics (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia), which reoriented themselves to the West in quick succession, whereas others (Like Moldova and Ukraine) still hadn't managed to reach 1991 levels of GDP almost 25 years after the fact.

Ukraine, though, faced unique challenges due to their specialized nature as the USSR's industrial core. It's economic base was not as prepared as others due to a lack of diversification and dependence on Russia. In the following years, it only spiraled further into an inevitable economic collapse. Privatization of state-owned industrial and agriculture resources were slow to nonexistent. It didn't enjoy the same sort of relationship with the West as other former Soviet republics did, and it suffered greatly. As a rising oligarch class took advantage of the situation, and rampant corruption rose. It was bound for disaster. The Eastern regions wanted to continue the integrated nature of their economy and politics with Russia, whereas the Western parts, like Kyiv and Lviv, looked toward the West as their future,

By 1993, the prognosis was utterly grim. It's GDP had fallen by 45%, and hyperinflation had reached a staggering 10,155% (much higher than Russia's 34% and 840%,, respectively). Workers were going unpaid. Aid it had received, primarily from the United States, helped avert a mass famine, but was not sufficient to bolster their economy in such a fashion that they could hope to stabilize themselves.

And then, the nuclear weapons. A stockpile of nuclear material it had inherited on it's territory then meant it had the third-largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world, behind only Russia and the US. The burden of paying to maintain this was mainly covered by Russia, as Moscow still kept onto the launch codes and considered the responsibility theirs to cover - but this raised substantial concern. As the US ambassador to Ukraine, Roman Popadiuk, stated at the time “The government can’t feed its army—how can it secure 176 ICBMs?”. The CIA estimated in 1993 that this would raise global proliferation risks by 30-40% and were extremely concerned with the loyalties of it's military to keep those assets secure. The situation was only exacerbated by contrary statements by Ukraine's then-president Leonid Kravchuk as to whether they would choose to hold onto this material, or become a non-nuclear state.

So when President Clinton met with Kravchuk in March of 1994 at the White House, Clinton made him an offer he couldn't refuse - a massive increase of US aid in exchange for their agreement to denuclearize, nearly doubling the aid amounts per year for the remainder of his administration as well as throwing in an immediate additional $350m of aid under the Nunn-Lugar act to pay for denuclearization efforts on top. Kravchuk had initially faced internal pushback from the Ukrainian parliament by the nationalists, who wanted him to hold onto the nuclear material for security purposes, but even they signaled their willingness at that point to acquiesce to the West's concerns and were willing to agree to terms, as long as they received some sort of promises of security as well.

And that's where the Budapest Memorandum enters the picture. Finalized in December of 1994 in the city it's named for, the document was crafted with the cooperation of delegations from the US, Russia, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. It's very title, the "Memorandum on Security Assurances in Connection with Ukraine’s Accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons", and it's status as a non-binding political agreement (unlike a "treaty, a "memorandum" does not carry the same weight in international law) would only bring about much trouble a couple of decades later when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 as to what America's responsibilities were.

You see, the language of the document was very specific about what the US was and wasn't willing to commit to - why rather than use the word "guarantee", the US was only willing to say it offered "assurances" (a non-binding term). As quoted in a 2022 Daily Beast article, Rose Gottemoeller (a key negotiator for the US and former Deputy UN Secretary General) said “‘Garantii’ in Russian and Ukrainian is kind of the only word they had—they didn't have a word for ‘assurances,’” and that “There was not any confusion that the United States was offering something different. And that point is being lost.”

The offer on the part of the US is very limited in scope. We "assured" to respect Ukraine's territorial sovereignty and refrain from coercion against their government ourselves in point 1 of the document, and only made one offer if Ukraine became the victim of aggression under point 4 - to seek a UN Security Council action on Ukraine's behalf if that situation ever arose.

Steven Pifer, the US ambassador to Ukraine has confirmed this in a piece he authored for the Brookings Institution in 2019, where he said "U.S. officials also continually used the term 'assurances' instead of 'guarantees,' as the latter implied a deeper, even legally-binding commitment of the kind that the United States extended to its NATO allies."

“When Ukrainians, after Budapest, went back, they probably tried to sell it more as ‘guaranteed’ assurances, in part because there was a political interest in Ukraine in saying this is a bigger deal and sort of obscuring the limitation that we gave.” Pifer said. This, again, was likely because the nationalist element's initial hesitation to agree would only be sated if the strength of it's language was overstated internally.

Today, we see a great misunderstanding amongst many supporters of US involvement in Ukraine, feeling that the US is obliged to support their ongoing war effort against Russia. From Marco Rubio, Antony Blinken and other notorious neocons stressing a "moral obligation" to them to continue providing aid, some even arguing for direct military intervention on their behalf. Even after Russia's invasion in 2022, the former ambassador, Steven Pifer has seemingly made contradictory claims, stating in a 2025 op-ed that "Based on the promises it made to Ukraine... the U.S. has an obligation—short of boots on the ground—to provide Ukraine with what it needs to defend its territorial integrity and political independence." only further adding fuel to the fire.

Repeatedly, Zelensky and others in Ukrainian leadership have frequently framed our obligations as security "guarantees" and have made statements - perhaps not outright - that by limiting our aid, we are not honoring the terms of the agreement and are free to pursue a nuclear program themselves. All it takes is a simple search on Twitter/X to find calls from persons of authority and regular Ukrainian citizens feeling that America "owes" them a debt for their agreement. many unaware of the details of why the agreement was made in the first place (or unwilling to acknowledge), that the United States essentially paid them in aid that they so desperately needed in the early 90's to survive.

"Give us our nukes back" is a refrain often seen on that social media platform and others. Words like "traitor" and "Putin's puppet" are thrown around freely to describe Trump, Obama, and Biden - indeed America as a nation - because we haven't done more for them and our support to continue throwing money and weapons into the conflict is waning. Frankly, I find those calls disturbing as it shows an ingrained lack of understanding of historical context, and that's why I wanted to write this piece to help clarify some things, hopefully, for all parties involved.

I am not a journalist by trade, but I am someone who has invested an inordinate amount of time in understanding the nature of the conflict and the history of Ukraine, especially after 1991 purely because it's a matter I've become particularly curious about. If you would like to support my "work", as it were, and feel generous, any contributions made here on buymeacoffee will be greatly appreciated. I have other pieces in the works I'd like to publish but taking time away from my art also comes with a cost.

Regardless, thank you for reading/sharing my thoughts and insight into this matter. You can find me on Twitter as @therevjoeblank and I welcome any productive commentary or even disagreement to what I've discussed.

- Joe Blank