"Small" perhaps, but relevant.
I'm not basing this on inside information. I'm basing it on logic.
Whose nukes they were is immaterial. "Possession is nine-tenths of the law"
I'm guessing, perhaps groundlessly, Ukraine didn't want the weapons, Ukraine wanted the security.
Precisely as I thought.
Starting up a viable nuclear missile program from scratch is expensive.
Ukraine had a BARGAIN on its hands, IF it had wanted.
EACH of the obstacles you cite is correct. BUT !
Compare the cost of rebuilding the former Soviet nukes to Ukraine's specifications would probably cost a minuscule fraction of what building Ukrainian nukes from scratch would have cost.
That might seem plausible, IF Russia took them back grudgingly. There's another possibility.
Russia may have preferred to repatriate her nukes positioned in Ukraine, thereby leaving Russia's next-door neighbor Ukraine without the defense, so that in the future Russia could invade Ukraine, without risk of nuclear defense.
The bully doesn't need security guarantees from the pacifist.
It's the pacifist that needs security guarantees from the bully.
Perhaps.
But Putin, BBC, Aljazeera, NYT, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, FOX, AP & others have suppressed that information with consummate perfection.
Since Reagan / Iran-Contra I'd believe it.
None the less, not in the least clear to me how the carnage in Ukraine today is going to remedy reckless extraordinary U.S. military largess of years past.
I confess R5, you have me wondering.
Skimming a little off the top here or there can get lost in the weeds.
That's an awful lot of money.
Difficult to imagine that in the ruthless partisan tensions at the capitol, that sufficient fuss over this would not have called it to public attention.
If nothing else, OMB should have caught it.
And we have NATO allies that would have been offended by this.
If you have a URL or two, we can try to piece a coherent picture together. But at this point something seems amiss to me here.
You miss the point, which is that it was the presence of Russian nukes in the Ukraine that caused the insecurity for the Ukraine.
By having Russian nukes in the Ukraine, that meant the Ukraine would be targeted by the US, if anything happened.
And these nuke were never possessed by the Ukraine.
The maintenance and launch crews were always only Russian, even after the USSR broke up.
There is no way the Ukraine could have reverse engineered these Russian nukes enough to be able to ever maintain them, much less launch them.
The treaty violations that amounted to acts of war by the ethnic Polish generals was well documented.
First of all, the attempt to block Russian use of Sevastopol in 2014.
There were also lots of verified massacres, like when the ethnic Polish generals had 50 ethnic Russian protestors burned alive in the Odessa Trade Center in 2014.
It was the ethnic Polish generals who violated the treaties by repeatedly trying to put NATO nukes on Russia's border.
Then it is clear that Zelensky is the one who cut all communications off with Moscow in 2022, essentially an act of war.
Here is more on just some of the violence against the ethic Russian natives in the Ukraine.
{...
In early 2014, there were clashes between rival groups of protestors in the Ukrainian city of
Odesa, during the
pro-Russian unrest that followed the
Ukrainian Revolution.
The street clashes were between pro-unity (and pro-
European) protesters (as well as football fans) and anti-government (
anti-Maidan), pro-Russian protesters. Violence erupted on 2 May, when a 'United Ukraine' rally was attacked by pro-Russian separatists. Stones,
petrol bombs and gunfire were exchanged; two pro-Ukraine activists and four pro-Russia activists were shot dead in the clashes. The pro-Ukraine protesters then moved to dismantle a pro-Russian
protest camp in
Kulykove Pole, causing some pro-Russian activists to barricade themselves in the nearby Trade Unions House. Shots were fired by both sides, and the pro-Ukraine protesters attempted to storm the building, which caught fire as the two groups threw
petrol bombs at each other.
The clashes resulted in deaths of 48 people, 46 of whom were anti-Maidan/pro-Russian activists.
42 of the victims died in the Trade Unions House fire, and 200 were injured.
The events were the bloodiest civil conflict in the region since the
Odessa Bolshevik uprising of 1918.
Although several alleged perpetrators were charged, there has yet to be a trial.
There are allegations that some police colluded with pro-Russian activists in the initial street clashes.
In 2015, the International Advisory Panel of the
Council of Europe concluded that the investigation's independence was hampered by "evidence indicative of police complicity",
and that authorities failed to thoroughly investigate the events.
An
ECHR ruling in March 2025 found Ukraine responsible for failing to prevent fatalities and conduct an effective investigation into the events.
The Court ordered the Ukrainian state to pay a total of €114,700 in compensation to survivors and victims' families.
en.wikipedia.org
...}
Here is just what the US gov will admit we gave to the Ukraine.
{...
The U.S. Congress has voted through five bills that have provided Ukraine with aid since the war began, doing so most recently in April 2024. The total budget authority under these bills—the “headline” figure often cited by news media—is $175 billion. The historic sums have helped a broad set of Ukrainian people and institutions, including refugees, law enforcement, and independent radio broadcasters, though most of the aid has been military-related. Dozens of other countries, including most members of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union (EU), are also providing large aid packages to Ukraine.
...}
Ten charts illustrate the extraordinary level of support the United States has provided Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders.
www.cfr.org
