On February 26, 2008, Vladislav Kaskiv, a member of Verkhovna Rada (the unicameral Ukrainian parliament), called for Ukraine to reacquire nuclear weapons. His proposal came amid heightened tensions between Russia and Ukraine, as Ukraine seeks to join NATO and speculation swirled that the United States might seek to place U.S. missile defense assets in the country. On February 14, 2008, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that if Ukraine accepted NATO deployments or hosted part of the U.S. missile defense system, Russia might target its missiles onto such bases in Ukraine. In response to this threat from Putin, Kaskiv declared that Ukraine needed nuclear weapons to defend itself.

Kaskiv is not the first Ukrainian official to discuss reviving the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal. In the 1992 Lisbon Protocol, Ukraine agreed to transfer to Russia the nuclear weapons that had remained on Ukrainian territory after the break up of the Soviet Union. In 1994, Kiev signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapon state and received assurances from the NPT nuclear weapon states (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) that they would not use nuclear arms against Ukraine. Since then, however, Ukrainian politicians have raised the issue of reacquiring nuclear weapons on several occasions. In the spring of 1999, for example, after the beginning of the war in Kosovo, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a resolution stating that a draft law would be sent to the Supreme Council, renouncing Ukraine’s non-nuclear status. [1] No change in Ukrainian nuclear policy resulted, however. More recently, in 2003, some Ukrainian politicians initiated a discussion, again without result, on revising Ukraine’s non-nuclear status during the crisis with Russia over the ownership of Tuzla (a narrow strip of land in the strait between the Black and the Azov Seas, which became the source of a bitter territorial dispute between the two states). [2]

Background: Putin Warns Ukraine on NATO Accession
Russia has long opposed the eastward expansion of NATO, calling the alliance a relic of the Cold War. Despite Russia’s opposition, on January 15, 2008, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushenko, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and Rada Chairman Arseniy Yatsenyuk sent a letter to NATO requesting that the country be considered for NATO’s Membership Action Plan (MAP), a first step towards gaining membership in the organization. [3] Soon thereafter, Putin warned that, while Russia could not interfere in internal Ukrainian matters, Russia would respond to NATO’s enlargement to include Ukraine, especially if NATO military bases were established on Ukrainian territory. Putin said: “It is terrible even to think that in response to this... Russia cannot theoretically exclude aiming our offensive-missile systems at Ukraine.” [4] If Ukraine were to allow NATO to establish bases, he said, “We will be forced to redirect our missiles at sites which we believe threaten our national security.” [5] Putin’s statement was not entirely surprising, given the fact that Russian officials have previously threatened to target missiles at proposed U.S. missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. [6] In his speeches, Putin did not explicitly threaten to target nuclear missiles at Ukraine, but many Ukrainians, including Kaskiv and other members of the Pora political party, assumed that this was what Putin meant.

Kaskiv Calls for Ukraine’s Return to the “Nuclear Club”
Responding to Putin’s statements, Kaskiv, head of the Pora political party (a rather marginal, minority member of the pro-Yushenko “Our Ukraine – National Self-Defense” parliamentary coalition), called on Ukraine to resurrect its nuclear weapon capacity. He said that his party would initiate the process of reexamining the issue of “restoring Ukraine’s nuclear status” in the parliament. In reference to Putin’s remarks, Kaskiv noted: “We don’t know whether Russia would have made such comments, if Ukraine had nuclear weapons.” [7] Official Pora Party documents, released following Putin’s statements, contained similar declarations: “We believe that the Kremlin’s nuclear threats must receive an appropriate response. Ukraine must return to the ‘nuclear club,’ since Russia has essentially nullified the security guarantees [not to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine] which it gave in 1994.” [8] Notably, Pora’s written statement regarded accession to NATO and acquisition of nuclear weapons not as alternatives, but as complementary goals. According to the Pora document, Ukraine should achieve both to guarantee its security. [9]

Responses to Kaskiv’s Remarks
Ukrainian National Security Council Secretary Raisa Bogatyreva rejected Kaskiv’s remarks. She noted that Ukraine had already made its choice regarding nuclear weapons, and that it was not possible to return to Ukraine’s nuclear past. [10] Furthermore, the head of the parliamentary Subcommittee on Military Security and former Defense Minister Aleksander Kuzmuk explained that recreating Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal would be extremely difficult, given the fact that, during the 1990s, all of Ukraine’s strategic aviation assets and special missile equipment were either dismantled or transferred to Russia. [11]

As for the warheads themselves, Ukraine currently does not possess an entire “nuclear fuel cycle”; thus, building nuclear warheads would require either the construction of an expensive and technically complex uranium enrichment capability or diversion of plutonium from Ukraine’s nuclear power reactors, which are subject to monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Additionally, plutonium production would also require the construction of a costly plutonium separation plant. (Ukraine does not enrich uranium for its nuclear power plant fuel, but purchases the fuel from Russia.) Moreover, an effort to return to nuclear weapons status would violate Ukraine’s NPT obligations and trigger potentially grave diplomatic repercussions – including NATO’s likely rejection of Ukraine’s bid to join the group, as well as intense pressure from Russia.

Responding to Putin’s threat to target possible NATO bases in Ukraine, President Yushenko sought to defuse the issue by stating that, “If Russia is worried about [NATO] military bases, then Ukraine will never go for that. We are prepared to constitutionally guarantee it.” [12] Such a guarantee might, in principle, permit Ukraine to join NATO, while deflecting a possible nuclear threat from Russia – and sidestepping the issue of whether Ukraine should consider re-opening the question of its status as a non-nuclear weapon state.

Conclusion
The strongly negative domestic reaction to Kaskiv’s call for nuclear arming; the technological and financial impracticality of implementing this course of action; and the significant diplomatic costs that it would incur make it highly unlikely that his statement will lead to a change in Ukraine’s nuclear stance. Kaskiv’s position does demonstrate, however, that elements of the Ukrainian elite, especially more radical groups, reminisce fondly about Ukraine’s “nuclear past” and that periodically, particularly during times of international tension, such nostalgia can well up into open suggestions for reacquiring nuclear weapons, despite all of the daunting challenges this option would confront.

Jacob Quamme – Monterey Institute James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies