Thomas Röper, St.Petersburg (Russia) Russian propaganda or truth? 24.3.22 https://www.anti-spiegel.ru
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Selensky’s appearance at the Munich Security Conference https://youtu.be/IVAExDHaKcc
In fact, those who do not know the content of international treaties will find no reference in Selensky’s speech to the threat of nuclear arming of Ukraine. However, from minute 14 to minute 15.30 Selensky says completely openly that he wants to nuclear arm Ukraine. The key to understanding this is the Budapest Memorandum, which Selensky threatens to denounce.
The Budapest Memorandum
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine were nuclear powers because Soviet nuclear weapons were stationed on their territories. In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, these states pledged to give up their nuclear weapons to Russia and not to seek their own nuclear weapons in the future. In return, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom gave them certain security guarantees.
The memorandum led to controversy in 2013 because the guarantor powers had promised, for example, not to exert economic coercion on these states. In 2013, however, the United States imposed economic sanctions on Belarus in violation of the memorandum. In response to criticism of its breach of the treaty, the U.S. Embassy in Minsk wrote in a statement (source follows below):
„The Belarusian government’s repeated claims that U.S. sanctions violate the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Guarantees are unfounded. Although the Memorandum is not legally binding, we take these political commitments seriously and do not believe that any U.S. sanctions, whether imposed because of human rights or nonproliferation concerns, are inconsistent with or undermine our commitments to Belarus under the Memorandum. Rather, the sanctions are aimed at protecting the human rights of the Belarusian people and combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and other illicit activities, not at providing an advantage to the United States.“
In plain English, the U.S. argued that the Budapest Memorandum is not a legally binding treaty at all. The U.S. argumentation in this regard is quite adventurous, but so be it. Incidentally, the U.S. is apparently embarrassed by this assessment today, because the statement was removed from the site of the U.S. Embassy in Minsk, but can still be found in the Internet archive.
Selensky threatened on February 19, 2022, at the Munich Security Conference that Ukraine would leave the Budapest Memorandum. Since Ukraine’s (and Belarus’s and Kazakhstan’s) only commitment in the memorandum is to renounce its own nuclear weapons, this was a clear statement: Selensky openly threatened to nuclear-arm Ukraine.
Ukraine’s nuclear capabilities
This was not an empty threat. In the Soviet Union, institutes in Ukraine researched and worked on nuclear weapons. A factory for the production of ballistic missiles was located on the territory of Ukraine. And Ukraine has several nuclear power plants and nuclear facilities capable of producing nuclear weapons-usable material. So Ukraine has the knowledge, the radioactive material, and the infrastructure to go nuclear on very short notice.
Ukraine could have built a dirty bomb even more quickly because Ukraine’s nuclear waste storage facility is located on the site of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. This is also the reason why Russian paratroopers occupied the Chernobyl site immediately after the start of the Russian military operation: They were to secure the nuclear waste storage facilities so that Ukraine could not build a dirty bomb (much less a nuclear bomb). Building a dirty bomb would have been possible in one day. All that would be needed would be to pack nuclear waste into an existing warhead, screw that onto a missile or bomb, and fire it.
But did Ukraine even have plans to attack Russia? To answer the question, we need to look at Ukrainian military doctrine.
Ukrainian Military Doctrine
After the Maidan, President Poroshenko enacted Ukraine’s new military doctrine in 2015, in which Ukraine first defined Russia as its main enemy and second announced an alignment of Ukraine’s armed forces with NATO standards by 2020.
After that was implemented, the new Ukrainian President Selensky enacted the „Strategy for the Deoccupation and Reintegration of Crimea“ on March 24, 2021. One could read in the press release of the Ukrainian Presidential Administration about it, among other things:
„This document defines a set of measures of diplomatic, military, economic, informational, humanitarian and other nature aimed at restoring the territorial integrity and state sovereignty of Ukraine within internationally recognized borders through deoccupation and reintegration of Crimea.“
The West does not recognize Crimea as Russian, but one has to accept ( accept grudgingly on my part) that Russia considers Crimea to be Russian. Anyone who wants to change that risks war with Russia. These are the realities.
Ukraine has officially and publicly announced a war with Russia over Crimea with this document. So it is not at all far-fetched that Kiev has planned an attack on Crimea – and thus a war with Russia – because that is what President Selensky officially ordered by decree on March 24, 2021. The document spoke of „measures of a military nature“ – there is no clearer way to put it.
One day later, on March 25, 2021, President Selensky also put into force Ukraine’s new military doctrine. The document aimed at integrating Ukraine into NATO’s security architecture and reiterated the demand to retake Crimea, including by military means.
Conclusion
Ukraine openly announced its intentions to attack Russia. Ukraine had the capabilities to build nuclear weapons in the short term. And Selensky openly announced the intention to nuclear arm Ukraine.
You don’t have to agree that Crimea is part of Russia. But one has to wonder if Crimea is worth a nuclear war. Because not only would it have been likely if Ukraine had come into possession of nuclear weapons, it would have become almost inevitable.
Russia had – from its point of view – only the choice to allow a nuclear armament of Ukraine with all its incalculable consequences, or to prevent it by force. The negotiations on mutual security guarantees with the West initiated by Russia in December 2021 were unsuccessful; the West rejected talks on the core issues. This exhausted the possibilities of achieving anything at the negotiating table.
In Russia, the military operation is not a „hurrah project,“ but the vast majority of people in Russia understand that the Russian government had only a choice between plague and cholera and that military intervention in Ukraine is the lesser of two evils when the alternative is a likely nuclear war. Therefore, Russian support for the Russian government’s actions is very high and continues to grow.
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