Former US President Bill Clinton told RTÉ that he regrets having convinced Ukraine to give up its nuclear arsenal in 1994.

“I feel like I have a vested interest because I convinced them (Ukraine) to agree to give up their nuclear weapons. Russia would not have invaded if Ukraine still had its weapons,” he said.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power in the world. But in 1994, after talks between the US, Russia, and Ukraine, Clinton announced that Ukraine had agreed to withdraw its nuclear weapons from its territory.

Initially in 1993, the governments of Russia and Ukraine signed a series of bilateral agreements whereby Kiev renounced its claims to nuclear weapons and the Black Sea Fleet in exchange for $2.5 billion in debt relief, natural gas and oil, and future fuel supplies for its countries. nuclear reactors. Ukraine agreed to immediately ratify START-1 and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

In 1994, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, US President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister John Major signed the Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine agreed to remove all nuclear weapons from its territory in exchange for security guarantees from the signatories, the United States. , UK and Russia.

USA. provided Ukraine with more than $300 million (over $530 million in today’s dollars) for the decommissioning of its nuclear weapons and systems (which was completed in 2008), and doubled its financial assistance to Ukraine to $310 million (over $540 million in today’s prices).

“I knew that President Putin did not support the agreement of (former Russian) President Yeltsin never to interfere in the territorial borders of Ukraine — an agreement he made because he wanted Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons,” Clinton said, according to RTÉ . .

In February 2014, Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine, violating, among other things, the Budapest Memorandum. “When it suited him, President Putin violated it and took Crimea first. And I feel terrible about it because Ukraine is a very important country,” Clinton said.

Source: Kyiv Independent, RTE