Apart from joining NATO, Ukraine’s only option would be nuclear weapons, Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the European Council earlier this week while discussing what needs to be done to protect the eastern European country still fending off Moscow’s invasion.

“Who gave up nuclear weapons? All of them? … Ukraine. Who is fighting today? Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said.

As one can imagine, the statement had a ballistic impact.

Later that day, in a meeting with NATO top chief Mark Rutte, Zelenskyy had to explain that Ukraine has never discussed preparing to produce any nuclear weapons or to build a nuclear bomb.

“We are not building nuclear weapons. What I meant is that today there is no stronger security guarantee for us besides NATO membership,” he clarified.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry even issued a statement saying that Kyiv is not planning to develop weapons of mass destruction and remains committed to nuclear non-proliferation. 

“Ukraine is convinced that the NPT (the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons) remains the cornerstone of the global international security architecture,” the ministry’s statement said.

“Despite the ongoing Russian aggression, Ukraine continues to comply with the provisions of the NPT and remains a responsible participant in the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.”

Zelenskyy then had to explain further that he was illustrating how dire things were for Kyiv by referring to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which saw Ukraine give up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees from major nuclear powers, including the UK, the US and Russia. 

From today’s perspective, handing over the nukes was a mistake, and that’s all there is to it.

“Which of these major nuclear powers suffered? All of them? No. (Just) Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said at the EU Council meeting in Brussels on Thursday. 

Despite the assurances to respect and protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity, Moscow has violated Ukraine’s sovereignty twice in the past decade, “leaving Ukraine no choice but to pursue NATO membership for its security,” he said.

What is the Budapest Memorandum, and what did it do for Ukraine?

In December 1994, leaders of the US, the UK and Russia met in Budapest to pledge security assurances to Ukraine in connection with its accession to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear-weapons state. 

Ukraine agreed to relinquish its nuclear arsenal — the third-largest in the world — which it inherited from the Soviet Union, and moreover, to transfer all of around 1900 nuclear warheads to Russia for dismantlement. 

Twenty years later, in 2014, Russia first invaded Ukraine, illegally annexed Crimea and occupied large territories in the east of the country.

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Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has continued to develop and modernise its nuclear arsenal. In September, Moscow attempted to test its latest intercontinental ballistic missile, the RS-28 Sarmat, also known as Satan II, and proclaimed the “world’s deadliest” nuclear weapon by Russian authorities.

Matt Korda, an associate senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told Euronews Next that the RS-28 is meant to functionally replace the RS-20V Voevoda, a missile created over 30 years ago. 

Like many others from the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile family, it was originally developed by Pivdenmash, a Ukrainian state-owned aerospace manufacturer in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

In many cases, control systems for these missiles were designed by Khartron, formerly Electropribor, a design engineering bureau in Kharkiv. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia has regularly attacked Dnipro and Kharkiv with its missiles.

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Commenting on Zelenskyy’s statement, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow would not let Ukraine get nuclear weapons and that any move by Ukraine in this direction could not be concealed and would draw an appropriate Russian response.

“Russia will not allow this to happen, no matter what,” Putin told reporters. 

‘We have not become animals’

Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andrii Yermak, said on Friday it was Ukraine’s own decision to get rid of nuclear weapons back in 1994 and insisted that Zelenskyy’s statement was misinterpreted.

Yermak said what Ukraine wants is security guarantees and not nuclear weapons.

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“We want to receive what we have the rights to,” he stated, referring to the Budapest memorandum.

He emphasised that the outcome of the memorandum proved to be unfair for Ukraine, but he assured us that Kyiv would not reciprocate in the same unfair and unjust way.

“All of us in Ukraine are living in this terrible war, many of us lost our relatives, our friends, but the difference is, we have not become animals. This is the difference between us and Russia.”