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:

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