Comment by insane_dreamer
3 months ago
What actually happened to the nukes the Ukrainians had? Were they transferred to the US? Destroyed?
3 months ago
What actually happened to the nukes the Ukrainians had? Were they transferred to the US? Destroyed?
Those were Soviet nukes, physically located in Ukraine but not controlled by it, same as any French/US nukes stationed in Germany would not make it a nuclear state.
The ones in Ukraine got moved into Russia, in exchange for Ukraine receiving money and security guarantees.
> Those were Soviet nukes, physically located in Ukraine but not controlled by it, same as any French/US nukes stationed in Germany would not make it a nuclear state.
This is not an accurate comparison.
It's not that Russia had nukes in Ukraine and withdrew them. Many of the Soviet soldiers manning them were Ukrainians and stayed behind. Much of the infrastructure for maintaining the Soviet arsenal was also in Ukraine and had to be rebuilt in Russia. The situation was more akin to if the US broke up and Louisiana (which has a lot of nuclear warheads stationed in it) is dealing with whether they are now a nuclear power, or if they need to hand them over to South Carolina or something.
Ukraine had multiple Long-Range Aviation bases in it, Louisiana only has one (Barksdale near Shreveport)
> It's not that Russia had nukes in Ukraine and withdrew them.
Russia is the single legal successor of the USSR, so all Soviet nukes became Russian nukes, regardless where they were located. So after the USSR broke up, Russia did have nukes in Ukraine and withdrew them.
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> Those were Soviet nukes, physically located in Ukraine but not controlled by it, same as any French/US nukes stationed in Germany would not make it a nuclear state
It's not quite the same, since Ukraine was part of the USSR, and Ukrainian scientists, engineers, and tradesmen contributed to the effort. Germany, on the other hand, was never part of the American federation, and didn't contribute to American weapons development...since Wernher von Braun/Operation Paperclip.
Indeed. There was even a question of whether they could legally be considered Ukrainian or Russian weapons, regardless of where the command centre was. To solve that while the talks were ongoing they set up a ‘joint’ command centre in Moscow with ex-SSR countries theoretically sharing joint control over the weapons with Moscow.
Ukraine at one point wanted to formally claim ownership over the weapons, as after all breaking the permissive action locks wasn’t that difficult. The US talked them out of it, as a lead up to the Budapest Memorandum.
We all know how much the security guarantees of that agreement were worth.
38 replies →
Thanks. Did that happen immediately after the USSR breakup, i.e., when Yeltsin was in charge, or more recently under Putin?
Still under Yeltsin, 1994 I think. If you've heard about the Budapest Memorandum, that's exactly what it was about.
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Mearsheimer was right in 1993 (nukes).
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mears...
He was right in 2014:
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-t...
And he is still right:
https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/who-caused-the-ukraine-wa...
Not really, went through the last post and its an utter pile of shit to be very polite. Basically russian propaganda, seen 1000 times.
It ignores that people should have their right to self-determination, don't want to live under russian oppression. As somebody whose family lives were ruined by exactly same oppression of exactly same russia (err soviet union but we all know who set the absolute tone of that 'union' and once possible everybody else run the fuck away as quickly as possible) I can fully understand anybody who wants to have basic freedom and some prospect of future for their children - russia takes that away, they subjugate, oppress, erase whole ethnicities, whoever sticks out and their close ones is dealt with brutally.
Not worth the electrical energy used to display that text. Unless you enjoy russian propaganda, then all is good.
I think this guy paints a difference in thought that is not really there. Putin sees Ukraine neutrality and impotence as vital to Russia's security. No, he probably does not want to actually annex Ukraine, that would be a ball ache he doesn't need, but he would like it to behave like Belarus.
I think the real difference lies in whether one believes Ukraine deserves to decide its own path, or if it's forever doomed to be a chess piece on the board between spheres of influence, which seems to be the mindset both Putin and Trump are stuck in.