Berlin, December 15, 2025, will go down in history books as the day when Europe stopped being afraid and began to act

Towards a Just Peace: What the Berlin Joint Statement Means for Ukraine and Europe

On 15 December 2025, Europe’s political centre of gravity shifted to Berlin. There, a remarkable line-up of European leaders – including Chancellor Merz, Presidents Stubb, Macron, Costa, President von der Leyen, and Prime Ministers Kristersson, Frederiksen, Meloni, Schoof, Støre, Tusk and Starmer – issued a joint statement on Ukraine that could define the next phase of the war and the continent’s security architecture for decades to come.

At the heart of the declaration is a clear message: Ukraine’s security, sovereignty and prosperity are not only a moral imperative, but a core interest of Euro-Atlantic security. And for the first time, the United States and Europe are publicly aligning around a single framework for a just and lasting peace, centred on President Trump’s proposed plan and President Zelenskyy’s leadership.

A New Phase in the War – and in Diplomacy

Can Ukraine Legally Reclaim Its Nuclear Status?

In debates about Ukraine’s future, one question keeps resurfacing, quietly at first and then ever louder: could Ukraine ever re-enter the nuclear club? After the collapse of the security assurances that once underpinned its denuclearisation, the issue is no longer confined to fringe commentary. 

 

It now sits at the intersection of law and survival, of the NPT’s rules and a state’s right to exist. This article asks the hardest version of the question: can Ukraine legally reclaim a nuclear status, and what would such a decision mean for the world that once persuaded it to disarm?

Ukraine’s nuclear knot: how the 1990–1994 package built an architecture that broke in 2014 and 2022

1) The inheritance moment: a vast arsenal without a sovereign nuclear status

After the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine found itself hosting one of the largest nuclear arsenals in Europe. In practice, this was an unprecedented status: warheads were on Ukrainian territory, but command-and-control, permissive action links, and much of the operational chain remained embedded in Soviet, then Russian, systems.

That starting point matters. Ukraine’s decisions in 1990–1994 were not made in a moral vacuum. They were made under hard power realities and intense external pressure to preserve the global non-proliferation regime.

Andrii Azarov. How to get through a crisis with minimal losses and build a crisis-resilient business

Andrii Azarov, Founder of the GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCE international consortium (global-alliance.biz), entrepreneur with 35 years of experience, managing 40+ companies, organisations and projects; Chairman of the Higher Council of the European Association of Business Development.

Why the world keeps entering “new crises”

Over the last decade, the global economy has been living in a near-permanent stress test: financial shocks, political turbulence, economic downturns, pandemics, supply-chain disruptions, currency volatility, constant wars, energy price swings, high inflation and rising interest rates. These crises look different on the surface, but inside the business they trigger the same chain reaction: 

Zaluzhnyi: “Our allies must deploy nuclear weapons in Ukraine as a security guarantee.”

Nuclear Shadows Over Ukraine: From the Budapest Memorandum to Calls for Allied Deterrence

When Valerii Zaluzhnyi publicly argued that Ukraine’s allies should deploy nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory as a security guarantee, it was not just a provocative soundbite. It was the latest expression of a long, painful story: a country that once held one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals, gave it up under pressure and promises — and was then invaded by one of the guarantors.

To understand why such a statement can now be voiced by a senior Ukrainian statesman, we have to go back to the early 1990s.

Ukraine: Once the World’s Third-Largest Nuclear Power

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine did not start its independent life as a “normal” non-nuclear state. It suddenly found itself sitting on a huge part of the Soviet strategic arsenal: