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If Ukraine had not given up all its nuclear weapons (opinion)

2022-02-23T22:58:28.937Z


Ukraine was the third country with the most atomic weapons. After the United States and the USSR, no one, not even Israel, the United Kingdom or France matched them. 


Russia is paying a high financial price for its actions 0:44

Editor's note:

Carlos Alberto Montaner is a writer, journalist and contributor to CNN.

His columns are published in dozens of newspapers in Spain, the United States and Latin America.

Montaner is also vice president of the Liberal International.

The opinions expressed herein are solely theirs.

(CNN Spanish) --

In 1991, during the government of President George HW Bush (the father, to be clearer), the Soviet Union (USSR) collapsed.

It was good news for the West, but not everything was perfect.

Despite the fact that, under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed in 1987 and coming into force in 1988, both the United States and the Soviet Union committed to eliminating nuclear and conventional short- and medium-range ballistic missiles in a zone of influence, Russia concluded that it was not acceptable to dispose of all the material.

Let us remember that it was Trump who withdrew the US from this agreement in 2018, alleging that there were several violations of the agreement by Russia.



On January 20, 1993, Bill Clinton took office in Washington.

Among the problems he inherited from President Bush was what to do with the nuclear weapons held by the satellite countries of the former USSR.

There was one uniquely equipped: Ukraine.

There were 1,900 nuclear warheads there.

It was the third country with the most atomic weapons.

After the United States and the USSR, no one, not even Israel, the United Kingdom or France matched them.

It had strategic silos and fearsome aircraft capable of destroying every American city of more than 50,000 people with 400 to 550 kiloton bombs, 27 to 37 times more powerful than those that pulverized Hiroshima, according to senior researcher Steven Pifer's article "Order from Chaos.

Why care about Ukraine and the Budapest Memorandum”, published by the Brookings Institution.

What to expect from a possible war between Russia and Ukraine?

4:03

With all solemnity, before the watchful eyes of the United States and the United Kingdom, Russia and Ukraine signed the Budapest Agreement or Memorandum.

There, all parties undertook to respect the borders and limits of Ukraine, which constituted a recognition of its sovereignty over the entire territory in 1994, and, although not mentioned, this included the Crimean peninsula and the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, along the Russian border, full of ethnic Russians who spoke Russian and not Ukrainian.

In addition, it was established that Ukraine would receive payment for the expensive enriched uranium that was in the heads of the projectiles, reusable in nuclear power plants, to which was added the destruction of the silos and the scrapping of the planes.

However, in 2014 Yeltsin was no longer in charge in Russia but Vladimir Putin, who seized Ukraine,

manu militari

, the region of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, and started a war in the Donbas region that, by the end of 2021, had caused 14,000 deaths and 1.5 million displaced.

Putin violated the Budapest Memorandum, which unleashed an international response, perhaps because Ukraine was the largest segment of that amalgam that repressed the nationalist anxieties of the regions.

Survey: 1 in 2 Russians support using military force 0:32

It is obvious that nuclear weapons serve, among other things, to prevent invasions.

If India and Pakistan do not enter into a total conflict, it is because of the atomic bombs that the two nations possess.

And if North Korea has the luxury of threatening South Korea, where some 28,500 US soldiers are stationed, it is because of the nuclear weapons it possesses.

Today, Ukraine may regret having given up all the atomic weapons it had.

I think that Putin was not going to “exchange” Moscow and St. Petersburg for absolutely destroying Ukraine.

Of course he could finish off Ukraine and leave no stone unturned, but he would not be able to prevent the two capitals that exist in the country from being pulverized, as well as his political head.

Or maybe the other.

That of breathing and walking through life.

And you don't play with that.

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2022-02-23

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