Russia currently has the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world, after the United States. Power has been evoked in the war in Ukraine either by Moscow authorities, in a tone of alert in the event of an “existential threat against the country”, or by Kiev and its allies, who repudiate the scarecrow.
The post is partly due to the development of this type of military technology during the period of the Soviet Union, under the Cold War, but also to agreements made with the other republics after the dissolution of the communist bloc and to pressure from the US at the time.
With the demise of the USSR in 1991, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia signed a treaty to share control of the nation’s massive nuclear arsenal as it dismantled.
Then, the Kazakhs inherited the second largest nuclear testing ground in the world and the Ukrainians, who today no longer have atomic weapons, at that time became the third largest stockpile in the world.
The nuclear transition had the participation of the main leaders involved also in the Soviet dissolution.
Yeltsin and Gorbachev
In 1991, when the huge arsenal of the Soviet Union ended up being dissolved between some of its republics that became independent, there was a need to create some kind of agreement to guarantee not only the control of these weapons (and consequently to avoid that a nuclear war started), but also their proper maintenance—without proper care, the warheads could cause an unprecedented disaster.
In July of that year, shortly after the end of the communist bloc, Russia and the USA signed the agreement called Start 1 (acronym in English for “strategic reduction of the threat of weapons”), which, among other things, was about the reduction, from both sides of the countries’ nuclear arsenal.
Months later, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus signed an agreement to create a shared command among the Soviet atomic spoils countries.
But the folder with the most secret details (such as the codes that authorized the launch of the warheads) was passed directly by Mikhail Gorbachev, former Soviet leader and who commanded the end of the bloc, to Boris Yeltsin, the new Russian president.
Therefore, although the term determined that the launching of warheads needed a common agreement between the four countries, the power to “press the button” was concentrated with Russia.
Then US Secretary of State James Baker later recounted to Forbes magazine an excerpt from a conversation with Yeltsin: “[Ele] told that they [Ucrânia, Cazaquistão e Belarus] believed they would have nuclear weapons, when in reality they never would.”
The US interest
Such a disagreement could lead to a problem of nuclear proportions. And, in this sense, the US, as the other major atomic power in the world, acted to ensure that the solution to the problem also served its interests, as revealed by Baker in the same interview.
“We really wanted to deal with just one country, not all four. We didn’t want to end up with four more countries with nuclear weapons,” he said.
Hence, already in May 1992, the four countries and the US signed the Lisbon Protocol, which not only included Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus in the START 1 agreement, but also named these three as non-nuclear states and Russia as a nuclear state.
It was the first step towards the concentration of the arsenal by the Russians.
The case of Ukraine
Each of the countries made its negotiations for the transfer of armaments.
The only requirement was that everything be finished by 1997, because that was the year of validity of a good part of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, when it already needed to be in Russian care to avoid a catastrophe.
Kazakhstan made an exchange of atomic weapons for non-atomic weapons as early as 1992. Belarus surrendered its stockpile and received security guarantees in exchange – currently, even, the country is reviewing its non-nuclear position alleging a threat that bordering NATO nations, like Poland, stockpile missiles of this type.
Ukraine was more reticent to give up its arsenal. It signed the Budapest Memorandum (a document to which, in addition to the aforementioned States, the United Kingdom is also a signatory) with the conditions of transfer only in 1994 and already under internal resistance from some of its politicians.
Volodymir Tolubko, a former soldier and then member of Parliament, said the decision was premature and that the Ukrainians should keep part of the weapons as a way of deterring possible invasions.
At that time, all ex-Soviet republics walked in a climate of political uncertainty, as their governments were all newly installed. Ukraine, for example, had gained its independence just three years earlier, in 1991.
The agreement with the Ukrainians provided in exchange for guaranteeing their security, respecting their borders and paying thousands of dollars by Russia and the US.
“If Ukraine had not abandoned nuclear weapons, nobody would recognize it as an independent country,” recalled in 2011 Volodimir Litvin, president of the country’s Supreme Council, according to the newspaper Gazeta Russa.
Livtin’s speech shows how the then newborn state was fearful about its future — and not just because of threats from neighbors.
According to the then Ukrainian president, Leonid Kravtchuk, it was the US who imposed the condition of complete disarmament on the country, threatening them with possible sanctions, a tactic currently applied against the Russians in the Ukrainian war.
“If we didn’t remove the warheads from Ukraine, not only would there be pressure, but the country would suffer a blockade,” he later recalled, according to the Gazeta.
