Did Ukraine “own” its nuclear weapons?
In the early 1990s, Ukraine had the world’s third largest nuclear stockpile. But its nuclear inheritance is contested. Can you “own” something you can’t use?
October 10, 2024
Shortly after the publication of my piece on the 1994 Budapest Memorandum (“Did the West betray Ukraine?”), I was thrilled when the world-renowned academic, Professor Stephen Kotkin – widely regarded as perhaps the most distinguished living scholar of Soviet and Russian history – responded to me with some feedback:
“Ukraine did not give up ‘its’ nuclear weapons. Ukraine had no such weapons. Russia had nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil. Ukraine gave up Russia’s ability to fire nuclear weapons from the territory of Ukraine. Command and control was always in Moscow. It is absurd that this point is not a given in public discourse.”
Knowing the question of ownership was a fascinating one, this inspired me to look into it in greater depth.
The issue not only involves thorny technicalities, but compensation and, more importantly, Ukraine’s equal recognition as a successor state of the Soviet Union. Dr. Mariana Budjeryn, Senior Research Associate at Harvard’s Belfer Center and author of Inheriting the Bomb (detailing Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament), has argued:
“Contrary to conventional wisdom, the claim to nuclear ownership did not arise solely or even primarily from a desire by Ukraine to leverage its bargaining position and exert financial compensation and security guarantees from Russia and the West. Instead, it originated as a challenge to Russia’s privileged status as the sole nuclear heir of the Soviet Union and an attempt to reconstitute relations with Moscow on the basis of formal equality.”
Dr. Budjeryn has further suggested “Ukraine’s claim to rightful ownership of nuclear weapons, based on its status as a legal successor to the Soviet Union on par with Russia, became the most controversial aspect of its disarmament negotiations”.
This raises two questions. What is the link between having operational control over nuclear weapons and “owning” them? And if ownership is in question, what does this mean for a country’s international status as a nuclear-weapons state? Here’s what we know…
1) Ukraine officially ceded operational control – though not (necessarily) ownership – over the nuclear weapons on its territory
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine found itself with the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal.
But scarred by the legacy of Chernobyl, Ukraine was at first all-too-keen to give the nuclear weapons up and quickly reaffirmed itself as a non-nuclear weapon state, as per its original July 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty. In the Alma-Ata and Minsk agreements of December 1991, Ukraine agreed to withdraw and dismantle its tactical and strategic arsenals, and ceded the right to operational command and control over the weapons to the newly-created Commonwealth of Independent States (comprising the former Soviet republics), led by the Russian President.
But it should be noted that “the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] agreement specified control over the strategic nuclear forces, not ownership”.
2) Command and control was always centralized in Moscow
While today’s “betrayal” narrative suggests that Ukraine gave up a fully fledged deterrent “for nothing”, its nuclear inheritance was far from immediately deployable.
As Professor Kotkin emphatically put it in his email to me, all command and control infrastructure was (and had always been) centralized in Moscow. This was an important reason why Ukraine’s leaders wanted to give up the weapons in the first place. The Americans were also well aware, as shown in the following June 24, 1993 testimony to Congress (that Professor Kotkin pointed me towards) of Bruce Blair, an American nuclear security expert and scholar:
“There are strategic missiles and bomber payloads in Ukraine, all of which appear to be under Russia’s operational control. Although, as you alluded, until recently Russia pretended that the commander of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] Armed Forces, Marshal Shaposhnikov, exercised nuclear authority over weapons in Ukraine, I believe he was cut out of the loop last September; and that, since that time, it has been effectively, from the standpoint of nuclear command and control, an all-Russian affair.”
(By claiming that the weapons were controlled by the Commonwealth of Independent States commander, Russia could maintain the fiction that the CIS was a “supranational” entity, rather than a fig leaf for continued Russian dominance.)
It’s unfair to say that it would have been literally impossible for Ukraine to create its own system of control. This was acknowledged even by Yuri Dubinin, veteran Russian diplomat who was involved in the negotiations. And it explains why both Western and Russian specialists feared at the time Ukraine might develop the ability to take operational control of the weapons. Such fears were enhanced for Washington once it discovered that Kyiv had sole physical custody of certain nuclear weapons on its territory. As Steven Pifer – one of the US negotiators involved in Ukraine’s denuclearization talks, 1993–94 (taking place after Blair’s Congressional testimony) – told me in interview:
“We only figured this out on the American side in the fall of 1993… [that] there were a lot of spare nuclear warheads: spare warheads for the ballistic missiles, but also all of the warheads had been removed from hundreds of air-launched cruise missiles. They were in storage entirely under Ukrainian control.”
But taking active control was implausible – given the immense costs involved and Ukraine’s rapidly deteriorating economy, not to mention the high likelihood of seriously alienating the West, as well as the risk of provoking a pre-emptive attack by Russia.
“Could Ukraine really have become a nuclear power? Theoretically, yes. The country has the required research and technological potentials to support this technology. But here is what Minister Victor Mikhailov, an outstanding authority in this field, wrote in 1994: ‘It would take many decades for Ukraine to become a nuclear power – and funds which it does not have… One can master anything. But what would it cost!… The entire country worked to build our [Soviet] nuclear complex. Russia’s nuclear complex is now estimated at about five billion dollars. We need corresponding research facilities, specialists with required professional skills, as well as the infrastructure.’” - Yuri Dubinin, veteran Russian diplomat, April 2004
“Ukraine did possess capacity to establish operational control over these weapons, should it have chosen to do so, but that would have been an action that would have been very visible – visible to Moscow first and foremost (you could not have done it in a clandestine manner); and also an action that could have been – and most likely would have been – interpreted as quite provocative by the West.” - Dr. Mariana Budjeryn, speaking at Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute
3) Ukrainian elites did not regard operational control as a prerequisite to ownership
Some argue that given Ukraine’s inability to use the weapons, it couldn’t really claim to “own” them.
But aside from the fact that Ukraine could (at least theoretically) have established operational control, many Ukrainians – especially from the scientific community – felt entitled to co-ownership of the weapons because the country had been “directly involved in the creation of the USSR’s nuclear arsenal, having invested its own intellectual and material resources into the weapons’ production”.
The former Soviet republics did not conflate the issue of “ownership” with operational control. As Dr. Joseph Harahan, the (American) author of With Courage and Persistence: Eliminating and Securing Weapons of Mass Destruction, explained:
“Among the governments of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, the real issue was not which nation had operational control over the strategic nuclear forces, but which entity ‘owned’ the bases, forces, weapons and facilities of the strategic forces located in these nations.”
Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs made this distinction clear at the time, in a document dated March 3, 1993:
“Our position is based on the fact that Ukraine inherited from the former Soviet Union nuclear weapons on its territory, which do not belong to any state. At the same time, Ukraine does not exercise control over nuclear warheads, which would allow their use for their intended purpose, and does not intend to have such control […] [T]he delegation of Ukraine in negotiations with Russia stood for Ukraine’s ownership of all components of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons located in or withdrawn from Ukraine in 1992, and insisted that the status of strategic nuclear forces in Ukraine should be exactly as it is defined in the Alma-Ata and Minsk agreements (that is, under the operational control of the Commonwealth of Independent States joint command).”
4) The Lisbon Protocol de facto confirmed Ukraine’s status as an “owner” of nuclear arms
All former Soviet republics were recognized as equal successor states for many international treaties, including limits on conventional forces. But when it came to ratifying the (nuclear) Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) of 1991, the initial assumption was that Russia would be regarded as the sole successor state. (START was signed in July 1991, but didn’t come into effect until after the Budapest Memorandum was signed in December 1994, because of a proviso inserted by the Duma (Russian Assembly) when the treaty was ratified.)
This inconsistency reflected a certain pragmatism. Beginning in May 1982, Washington and (Soviet) Moscow had spent years negotiating START I and were familiar with each other. Both capitals wanted to stick with the original bilateral treaty, with the latter taking the lead in sorting separate agreements with the three nuclear inheritor states (to give up their nuclear weapons).
But by April 1992, realizing that Russia was making abysmal progress, the US pivoted to a collective approach and drove through the Lisbon Protocol (May 23, 1992). This landmark document officially and legally recognized Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus as equal successor states of the Soviet Union, and all four countries duly assumed the obligations of the Soviet Union under START I.
At the same time, Washington wanted to make it very clear to the non-Russian republics that they were required not just to reduce but eliminate all of their nuclear arsenals. To that end, Article V of the Lisbon Protocol explicitly committed Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus to accede to the Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear states in “the shortest possible time”. Further hammering this home, the Presidents of the three countries had to pen a letter specifically pledging to eliminate all nuclear weapons on their territories within seven years.
But the Lisbon Protocol thus greatly strengthened Ukraine’s claim to be “owner” of the nuclear arms. According to Dr. Harahan:
“One legal interpretation of this international recognition held that Ukraine, and by implication the other signatory nations, ‘owned’ the nuclear warheads, missiles and bombers, and infrastructure located physically on their territory.”
5) Still, the prevailing non-proliferation regime could not grant Ukraine even “temporary” status as a nuclear power
Ukraine’s claimed status as an “owner” of nuclear weapons had implications for the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, which had recognized only five legitimate nuclear-weapons states. All other countries were, by default, designated as non-nuclear states.
Anatoliy Zlenko, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister 1990–94, tried to fudge the issue by proposing an incredible legal formula: “Ukraine has a unique status: the republic is not a nuclear state, but it has nuclear weapons.”
But many of his compatriots argued that “owning” nuclear weapons meant Ukraine was a nuclear state, even if it intended to renounce its claim. Ukraine would therefore need to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty on “the basis of this special status, as a temporary nuclear-weapon state”.
Yuriy Kostenko, one of Ukraine’s most prominent nationalist deputies who was active in Ukraine’s disarmament negotiations, pointed out that it wouldn’t make sense for a non-nuclear weapons state to become party to an arms reduction treaty. Given this, he argued the Lisbon Protocol contained a legal contradiction: Ukraine had to be a nuclear-weapons state to be a START I signatory, but a non-nuclear weapon state to accede to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (as stipulated by Article V).
In theory, it could be possible for Ukraine to be counted as a nuclear state for ratification of START I and – having subsequently renounced its claim – to sign as a non-nuclear state for its accession to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But for hawkish deputies in the Rada, this would have the politically unpalatable consequence of Russian-owned nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory for the duration of the disarmament process.
Ultimately, those who called for a “temporary” or “partial” nuclear status (including Ukraine’s Defense Minister Kostyantyn Morozov and Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma) failed to recognize that the prevailing non-proliferation regime only allowed two binary states of existence. And a refusal at the time to affirm itself unambiguously as a non-nuclear weapons state would have doomed Ukraine to isolation from the “civilized” world.
“Ukraine tried to make a very powerful case that it was the legitimate owner of the nuclear weapons left on its territory, but it came up not only against the interests of the powerful states, but also against this international non-proliferation regime that did not have room for one more addition. Ukraine could only have remained a nuclear state, even temporarily, outside that regime as some sort of pariah state. All these were very formidable factors and constraints that the Ukrainian leadership had to take into account – not to say that this was inevitable, but pointing out that everything had a cost and that for Ukraine the costs of prolonging this state of nuclear limbo were significant.” - Dr. Mariana Budjeryn
“The Non-Proliferation Treaty’s stark binary categories of ‘nuclear-weapon state’ and ‘non-nuclear-weapon state’ could not be reconciled with Ukraine’s new category of ‘nuclear ownership’ – legal possession without operational control – which fell somewhere in the middle.” - Dr. Mariana Budjeryn
Coda: the cover of a diplomatic note
US Ambassador to Ukraine, William G. Miller, arrived in Kyiv in September 1993. Within weeks he concluded that “the United States had never seriously considered that the nuclear forces in Ukraine were ‘owned’ by that nation as a right of succession. Yet, Ukraine’s President, Prime Minister, Defense and Foreign Ministers, and a majority of the Parliament held this belief and were willing to negotiate that right away.”
At the same time, inexperience and disagreements among Ukraine’s elites resulted in continual (and alarming) vacillation, which – albeit exacerbated by Russian disinformation – severely undermined Kyiv’s credibility as a bargaining partner with Washington and Moscow.
Ukraine repeatedly delayed ratifying the Lisbon Protocol, while making increasingly fervent declarations of “ownership”. In June 1993, Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma, and a Rada member, Dmytro Pavlychko, called on the government to assume operational control over the 46 SS-24 missiles on Ukraine’s territory. The next month, the Rada adopted a foreign policy doctrine affirming itself as “the owner of nuclear weapons”. Soon afterwards, President Kravchuk asserted that START I did not cover the SS-24 missiles and that Ukraine would be keeping them.
Russia was consistent in adamantly rejecting all Ukrainian claims of ownership. So when nationalist deputies insisted on reaffirming Ukraine’s status as an “owner” as late as November 1994 in a Rada resolution ratifying the Non-Proliferation Treaty, there was a problem. US officials came up with a neat solution: President Kuchma would “clarify” that Ukraine had joined the Treaty as a non-nuclear weapons state in a private diplomatic note, bypassing the need for a second Rada vote.
Did Ukraine ever “own” its nuclear weapons? Eminent scholars will surely be able to debate this question for decades to come. Collective ownership did always have its challenges.
Sang-Hwa Lee is a Civic Future fellow 2023–24, with an MA in Philosophy from King’s College London and a BA in History from the University of Cambridge. You can follow her on X here.
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