Military analyst Sean Bell says:
Thank you, Joan, for this very topical question.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, Ukraine became the world’s third largest nuclear power.
The Soviet leadership had previously forward-deployed many nuclear weapons into Ukrainian territory, and although the Ukrainians did not have the launch codes for these weapons, they eventually figured out how Ukraine could avoid these problems. It was widely believed that they would find it.
In an effort to resolve concerns over nuclear proliferation, the United States, Britain and Russia agreed to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons.
These negotiations ended with the Budapest Memorandum of Understanding in 1994. But less than two decades later, Russia broke that agreement and invaded Crimea, and the United States and Britain failed to take decisive action to meet their 1994 obligations regarding Ukraine’s sovereignty.
If Ukraine had possessed nuclear weapons at the end of the Cold War, it is highly unlikely that Russia would have considered a full-scale invasion in 2022.
A precedent was set last year with Russia’s decision to forward deploy nuclear weapons to Belarus, raising the prospect that Western powers might consider deploying similar nuclear weapons to Ukraine.
While such a move would be seen as a clear escalation by Russia, it could be Ukraine’s ultimate deterrent against further Russian aggression.
But while this is an important caveat, to my knowledge there is no further movement to enact such a deployment.
Unlike Russia’s clear provocation with the forward deployment of nuclear weapons to Belarus, Western countries appear to be considering more measured ways to support Ukraine.
