With Courage and Persistence

Russia and Ukraine were at a breaking point. Prior to the

meeting, Marshal Shaposhnikov stated publicly that he

believed all nuclear weapons and forces should be transferred

immediately to Russia’s jurisdiction. At one point he

declared, “I am prepared to hand over the nuclear briefcase to

the Russian Defense Minister today or tomorrow...”

When

the meeting convened, the defense ministers from Russia,

Belarus and Kazakhstan agreed on a draft proposal that

explicitly declared that combat control over the combined

strategic nuclear forces would be exercised jointly by the

CIS High Command and the Russian Minister of Defense.

Belarus, taking it further, indicated its willingness to give

up legal rights to its strategic nuclear forces. At Ukraine’s

insistence, however, the proposal was dropped. When the

meeting ended, Shaposhnikov admitted publicly that it was a

failure and asked the defense ministers to negotiate bilateral

agreements that would deﬁne the jurisdiction, withdrawal

and transfer of their strategic nuclear warheads to Russia.

The next month, Russian leaders stepped up their pressure

to get legal, and then actual possession of all of the strategic

nuclear forces. In early November the Russian Duma ratiﬁed

the START I Treaty conditionally. It declared that Russia would

delay formal exchange of treaty documents until Belarus,

Kazakhstan and Ukraine ratiﬁed the START Treaty, signed

and ratiﬁed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation (NPT) Treaty, and

negotiated and signed bilateral agreements on the return of

their strategic nuclear weapons to the Russia. The Duma’s

vote, 157 to 1 in favor, endorsed the government’s policy on

the “inherited” strategic nuclear forces in the non-Russian

states.

Here was another sign that the Russian government,

for all practical purposes, had abandoned its support for

the CIS Armed Forces. 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.

National leaders in Ukraine and Kazakhstan insisted that

the CIS charter, which had been agreed to unanimously in

December 1991 in Almaty, stated that the new states were

entitled to all of the property within their borders.

This,

however, was a tenuous claim. The CIS agreement speciﬁed

control over the strategic nuclear forces, not ownership. To

strengthen its position, the government of Ukraine clariﬁed

its claim on ownership in early November 1992, only a week

after the Russian Duma had ratiﬁed the START Treaty. “The

property of the armed forces of the former Soviet Union,”

U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin sign START II, January 1993

George Bush Presidential Library