Ukraine’s Nuclear Weapon Surrender A Futile Attempt at Preventing War

Abstract

This paper was originally written for Dr. Ilya Vinkovetsky in History 420: Themes in Russian Imperial History. The assignment asked students to choose a topic relating to the recent war between Russia and Ukraine and then write either an analytical essay or a research paper on that topic. The paper uses Chicago citation style.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine possessed many Soviet nuclear weapons. For various reasons, Ukraine removed these weapons from their possession and became a non-nuclear state. Considering the current war between Russia and Ukraine, there is a rising narrative that Ukraine should be equipped with nuclear weapons to defend itself against Russo-aggression, however, this paper explains why Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons and why keeping the weapons was not a viable option. The Ukrainian surrender of nuclear weapons was a necessary step for Ukraine to remain sovereign in its early years of independence.