Ukraine Handed Russia All Their Nuclear Weapons In 1996 In Exchange For A Guarantee They’d Never Be Invaded

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This happened when Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan signed The Budapest Memorandum, which brought Ukraine into the global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Russia, the US and Britain also signed this document which promised none of these countries would invade Ukraine and respect its sovereignties and existing borders while also giving them political independence.

The Memorandum stated: “Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.”

The document added that Russia, the US and Britain also wouldn’t use economic coercion tactics against Ukraine either.

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This is really sad, but to be honest Ukraine didn’t have a choice. The government really wanted to hold onto the nuclear bombs, but they wouldn’t receive western funding unless they got rid of them, which is what they really needed as a country that just emerged from the rubbles of the Soviet Union. Belarus and Kazakhstan were also potential nuclear powers, but they immediately gave up their bombs. Plus the bombs were too expensive to properly maintain so there wasn’t much use of them anyways.

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That being said... NATO isn't 100% clean here either:

They acted shady, but no written accord was broken. I'll quote a good article from Spiegel:

In doing so, the West didn’t break any treaties, but some participants were concerned nevertheless. Years later, Genscher[former Vice-Chancellor of West-Germany] said that the expansion was just fine from a formally legal point of view. But it was impossible to deny, he said, that it was counter to the spirit of the understandings reached in 1990.