Until 1994, Ukraine possessed nuclear weapons, making it one of the top three countries possessing the largest number of nuclear warheads in the world at that time. But how and who tricked Kyiv into giving them up, because this is clearly a bad decision, considering that the war was started by Russia, which is a nuclear power.

It should always be remembered that after the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Ukraine was ready to give up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for financial resources from the United States of America. But the most important thing is that the then Ukrainian authorities, together with the first president of independent Ukraine, Leonid Kuchyma, agreed not to have nuclear weapons, mainly because of the Russian Federation’s promise not to attack the Ukrainian state. It is often said that Ukraine was lied to in order to agree to the destruction of nuclear weapons. Of course, Russia lied – there is no doubt about it, but no less – the United States lied, which, according to the statement of the same first Ukrainian president in 2018, should have prevented the transfer of Ukrainian territories to Russia.

However, after the start of the war in the east of Ukraine, starting in 2014, annexing Crimea, Ukrainian territory, and ending with a large-scale invasion of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, we see that the Russians have not kept their promises. But let’s not forget that two more states also failed to keep their promise as a guarantor of peace and neutrality of Ukraine. In order to find out who it is, it is necessary to recall a turning point in the history of the young state of Ukraine.

An event we should all be aware of is that on December 5, 1994, at the OSCE summit in the Hungarian capital, the Budapest Memorandum on Security Guarantees was signed, a document that contained three almost identical political agreements for the three closest former Soviet countries. to Russia, and, of course, we are talking about Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

These states agreed to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in exchange for security guarantees from the signatories of the document. The three memoranda were initially signed by the three nuclear powers: the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States, later major powers such as China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents regarding assurances that if the three countries were attacked, those powers would step in in armed conflicts as allies.

The topic is relevant because the Security Council of the United Nations guarantees that decisive and immediate measures will be taken in case of non-fulfilment of the controversial Budapest Memorandum.

The Security Council has the same composition of countries (more precisely, permanent members of this Council), where the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi recently made an important speech about the future fate of Ukraine and called for a common front of all the countries of the world against Russian aggression

We all notice that, for example, the USA supports Kyiv the most in Ukraine’s defensive war. They do this through military, economic and humanitarian aid, and one of the reasons for this support, apart from the fact that it is normal, is that you are supporting a NATO partner country that has been attacked by an aggressor and is fighting a defensive war, the United States. would feel guilty, obliged and indebted to Ukraine for non-fulfillment of the Kyiv memorandum. This is an absolutely fair case, and who knows, he understands even more under this emotional charge.

And so, as a result of other agreements and the aforementioned memorandum between 1993 and 1996, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan voluntarily and without being forced by anyone gave up their nuclear weapons in exchange for respect for the sovereignty, independence and territorial unity guaranteed by the three states. the great powers of the 1990s – Russia, the USA and Great Britain.

The three mentioned states, of course, were also not to threaten or use force against the territorial integrity, political or economic independence of the signatories of the memorandum, and also undertook that none of their weapons would ever be used against these countries, except in cases self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations. Of course, the thesis of self-defense is intensively used by the current president Vladimir Putin, but we know that offensive self-defense does not exist.

Now, instead, the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, is threatening to use this nuclear arsenal, would it have come to this situation or even to the beginning of a large-scale war launched by Russia against Ukraine? These questions are as trivial as they are plausible. Who else would tear off territories from Ukraine if it had nuclear weapons? Absolutely no one, absolutely no state.

All current arguments regarding the fact that these agreements were signed by former states (the most important in the context of the war in Ukraine is the Moscow-Kyiv memorandum) have nothing to do with the present, have, first of all, no legal basis, but we know that Moscow with the current leadership led by Vladimir Putin, there is no longer even human consciousness, let alone legal or international law. –

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