Statements by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during the Munich Conference in February about changing Ukraine’s nuclear status are not accidental, Russian state news agency TASS writes in an analysis. According to him, since 1994, when Kyiv signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the country began to develop its own nuclear weapons.
Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal under a 1994 agreement between Russia and the West. About 1/3 of Soviet nuclear weapons were in the country. If it had remained in the country that declared independence, Ukraine would have been the third nuclear power in the world.
In Munich, Zelensky commented that Ukraine would consider the Budapest nuclear transfer agreement invalid unless it received security guarantees from the West.
Russia fears that Ukraine has the scientific potential and capabilities to develop nuclear warheads using uranium and plutonium, as well as access to various Western technologies. According to Moscow, activity in this direction has intensified since 2014 on the secret order of former President Petro Poroshenko.
TASS also refers to Western analyzes, but without attribution, that Ukraine has the ability to develop its own nuclear weapons using plutonium from the spent nuclear fuel storage facilities located in the country. According to a source in the agency of Russian departments, it will take several months for Ukrainian scientists to complete this task.
According to Russian information, the US also supplied plutonium to Ukraine for this activity.
Most of the research is carried out at the research center of the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology, as it has a base that allows the use of a wide range of nuclear materials research for weapons development.
And even if we develop our own nuclear weapons, this is no longer their problem. We are an independent country and no one has the right to tell us.