Olexandr Kochetkov encountered online ramblings from those who were “around thirty when independence of Ukraine was gained and already knew a lot,” claiming that there were thoughts about not giving up nuclear weapons (NW) and somehow negotiating with the Americans to maintain them together.
And then Putin wouldn’t have attacked us, the Dnipro would flow with moonshine, chickens would lay golden eggs even more expensive than in the Ministry of Defense, and Ukrainians, with their boundless wisdom, would comprehend half the universe.
I know the situation with NW not in general, but specifically through my work, from direct participants in the process.
So, I ask those who are still against Ukraine getting rid of NW, which it could neither use nor maintain: who told you, oh strategic ones, that Ukraine had a choice? That we had the option to agree or disagree?
After the Belavezha Accords, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan received an ultimatum from the USA and Russia (yes, from both together!): either you voluntarily give up NW to Russia, or Russia resolves the issue of controlling this weaponry on your territory as it sees fit—either amicably or, as now, the US doesn’t care.
Because they want a single center of NW control as it was during the USSR. Clearly, in case of disagreement on NW disarmament, there would be no talk of Ukrainian independence – it would not be recognized by the US, and after them, no one in the world.
And this was even a softening of the US position, because in 1991 President Bush outright stated in our Rada that Ukraine should be together with Russia, meaning, as part of it. It’s no surprise that Leonid Kravchuk decided that renouncing NW was an acceptable price for independence.
Let’s move on. Why are the advocates of retaining NW convinced that its presence would have protected us from Russian aggression? Israel has NW, and it doesn’t prevent Hamas and Hezbollah from bombarding Israel with rockets, attacking its territory, capturing and killing hostages. I can already hear the answer: because Hamas and Hezbollah are religious fanatics and terrorists.
But Russia now is the same fanatical and terrorist pseudo-empire! Read, listen: they are waging a “holy war” against us, a kind of Orthodox jihad.
And Putin, like the leaders of Muslim terrorists, doesn’t care how many of his fellow citizens are destroyed by a retaliatory Ukrainian strike, as long as Ukraine, which he sees as a direct threat to his power, ceases to exist.
Unfortunately, against madmen willing to destroy the whole world so that it doesn’t live differently and better than they do, NW is powerless.
Finally, I am convinced that it is a manifestation of social stupidity and impotence to seek the cause of today’s problems in someone’s lack of effort or decisiveness thirty years ago.
The main problem today is that our government is inadequate to the situation, unable to put the country on a wartime footing, to launch the defense industry, to organize effective mobilization. It can’t even decisively stop blatant corruption within its ranks.
So, various wise guys should not dwell on the past, but demonstrate the very decisiveness they demand from their predecessors, here and now.
Press the government, demand efficiency and justice from it. This will help in the war much more than chewing over stories about the ghosts of NW, which have been wandering somewhere in the depths of abandoned missile silos for decades…
But under the nonsense of disagreement with the past, we risk receiving another ultimatum from Russia and a weary, confused West in the guise of a peace agreement. One that future generations of Ukrainians will remember with even more contempt and disgust than the Budapest Memorandum. If these future generations of Ukrainians will exist at all.
Tags: Budapest Memorandum Russia russia ukraine war Ukraine USA
