Kiev can begin to create its own nuclear arsenal, without fear of international sanctions, said the former representative of the Ukrainian mission to NATO, Major General Pyotr Garashchuk. He stated this on the eve of the “Observer” channel.
According to the general, Ukraine has all the capabilities to get nuclear weapons - both organizational and technical, and the authorities are able, if necessary, to allocate funds to finance such a program. We can talk about creating not just a nuclear bomb, but full-fledged rocket warheads, I'm sure Garashchuk.
“I will say it again: we have all the power to develop and launch our own nuclear weapons,” he said in an interview with the presenters. According to the general, in the city of Dnepropetrovsk there is a plant that can produce intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).
We are talking about the plant "Yuzhmash", which during Soviet times produced the "Voevoda" ICBM, known in the West as "Satan". In March of this year, the Ministry of Defense reported the imminent disposal of these missiles - they will be replaced by the latest Sarmat ICBMs. It should be noted that now “Yuzhmash” is going through hard times - the company has suffered losses due to the break in relations with Russian counterparties. The lack of funding, in turn, led to an outflow of personnel.
- Peter Garashchuk
- © Screenshot from video www.obozrevatel.com
Pyotr Garashchuk is not the only supporter of the idea of creating Ukraine’s own nuclear forces, this topic has been constantly discussed by local politicians and public figures over the past years. As a rule, calls for a nuclear arsenal are heard in the context of the discussion of the Budapest Memorandum, in violation of which Kiev blames Moscow.
On December 7, the “moral and legal right” of Ukraine to receive the status of a nuclear power was announced on the TV channel NEWSONE by ex-People's Deputy, member of the political council of the radical Svoboda party and honored journalist of Ukraine Igor Miroshnichenko. According to him, this right appeared in Kiev after the guarantor countries allegedly did not help Ukraine to preserve its territorial integrity.
Applicants for the presidency of the country are also turning to the popular topic of nuclear weapons. Earlier, the chairman of the Socialist Party, a former adviser to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Ilya Kiva, promised to “return” the nuclear potential to Ukraine in the event of his victory in the elections.
“I will return nuclear status to our country! This will be the first thing I will do when I come to power. Thank God, the technology is all saved. And believe me, all disputed issues with neighbors will be decided on the same day when they pass the first tests! ”Said the politician on his Facebook page.
The thought of nuclear missiles and the Ukrainian intelligentsia. In November, People’s Artist Yury Rybchinsky spoke about the “moral right” of the country to nuclear weapons on the TV channel “112 Ukraine”. He proposed to "quietly" begin work on nuclear weapons. Moreover, Kiev has reactors and there are scientists who have not left the country yet, Rybchinsky explained.
What kind of “reactors” the artist spoke about is unclear, for even to enrich uranium when using it in the nuclear power industry, Kiev still turns to Russia.
According to the head of the regional security sector sector of the Center for Military-Political Studies of RISI Sergey Yermakov, now Ukraine does not have the technical capabilities to implement the full cycle of creating nuclear weapons.
“There are only some fragments and some specialists. Ukraine does not produce nuclear fuel even for nuclear power plants, nuclear shells on Ukrainian territory have never been produced at all. Therefore, there is nothing to talk about, ”the expert explained in an interview with RT.
Soviet heritage
The discussion about certain “rights” of Ukraine, allegedly arising in connection with the refusal of nuclear status, is also developing at the state level. For example, Petro Poroshenko referred earlier to the Budapest Memorandum, appealing to the American administration with the requirement to supply a lethal weapon to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In turn, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksandr Turchynov, stated that the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine was a "historical mistake."
In 2014, Valery Geletei, who at the time was the Minister of Defense of Ukraine, directly threatened with the creation of nuclear weapons. “If we cannot protect Ukraine today, if the world does not help us, we will be forced to return to the creation of these weapons,” the defense minister said.
Recall that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, nuclear weapons remained on the territory of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. At that time, the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons after the Russian arsenal was on Ukrainian territory - about 1950 strategic nuclear weapons, as well as 1,883 tactical nuclear weapons, including 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic bombers and missile mines.
The prospect of crushing the Soviet nuclear arsenal and the appearance on the world map of new nuclear states was not at all part of the plans of the countries participating in the nuclear club. If Kiev, Astana and Minsk decided to keep the Soviet nuclear weapons, they would have to face the pressure of the entire world community. At that time, there was no doubt about the correctness of the rejection of these weapons, and the declaration on Ukraine’s sovereignty adopted in 1990 determined the status of the country as a non-nuclear state.
Kiev agreed to take out the entire nuclear arsenal, which remained on Ukrainian territory after the collapse of the USSR, to Russia. In the process of eliminating the arsenals, launching missile shafts were blown up, the missiles were handed over to the Russian side, and the strategic bombers Tu-160 and Tu-95MS were dismantled for scrap. Subsequently, Kiev joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
The Budapest Memorandum, to which the Ukrainian authorities often refer, was signed in 1994 by representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the United States and Great Britain. According to this document, the United States, Great Britain and Russia pledged to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. Now Kiev believes that the reunification of the Crimea with Russia violated the terms of the agreement, despite the fact that a referendum was held on the peninsula, the results of which more than 96% of the population voted for withdrawing from Ukraine and joining the Russian Federation.
As the first president of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, said, Kiev knew that by 1997, the strategic warheads previously manufactured on Russian territory would expire, and the Ukrainian side did not have the capacity to dispose of such weapons - in any case, the warheads would have to be sent to Russia .
In order to independently master the full cycle of production and disposal of nuclear weapons, Kiev would need enormous funds, which, for obvious reasons, no one would have given him.
- Removal of highly enriched uranium from Ukraine, 2012
- Reuters
Although it is customary in Ukraine to talk about abandoning nuclear weapons as a kind of “mistake”, experts are confident that Kiev in any case could not have left the Soviet arsenal at its disposal. As Sergey Yermakov explained, Ukraine did not accidentally abandon nuclear weapons - Kiev simply had no other choice.
“Russia as the successor to the USSR not only assumed its debts, but also inherited the status of a nuclear power, this does not apply to Ukraine at all,” the expert said in an interview with RT.
Dangerous signals
Nevertheless, today Kiev not only shows “nuclear ambitions” in the media space, but also tries to speculate on this topic in the international arena. In November, representatives of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry appealed to the countries participating in the Budapest Memorandum with a request to hold urgent consultations regarding the fulfillment of obligations with regard to Ukraine. Representatives of the country's foreign policy department insisted that the United States and the United Kingdom should help "stop the aggression" of Moscow.
Recall that the signatories confirmed that they would not use weapons against Ukraine for any purpose other than for self-defense or otherwise “according to the UN Charter”. At the same time, Kiev believes that “Russian military” are present in the east of the country, although Moscow has repeatedly rejected these allegations.
It should also be noted that the use of military force against any state, with the exception of the listed situations, is already prohibited by international law - in fact, the memorandum only duplicates the already existing provisions of international legal norms, such as the UN Charter and the NPT.
As Sergey Yermakov explained, this document simply does not imply any additional security guarantees for Ukraine. And although this topic is actively exploited by Kiev, in practice it is impossible to achieve something from the United States and Great Britain. In addition, the text of the document does not even speak of an “exchange” of guarantees — the signatories only “confirm their readiness” to respect the territorial integrity of the country, “taking into account Ukraine’s commitment” to destroy all nuclear arsenals.
“Kiev’s obsessive demands are already annoying in the West, because the Ukrainian side has long been made clear what it can claim. Obviously, talk about nuclear status even in the past tense is simply irrelevant here, ”explained Sergey Ermakov.
According to the deputy director of the Institute of History and Politics of the Moscow State Pedagogical University, Vladimir Shapovalov, all the talk about the Budapest Memorandum and Nuclear Weapons, sounding in Kiev, is “blackmail and demagogy towards the West.” Washington still tolerates this rhetoric only because Ukraine still remains in the position of the American satellite, the expert explained in an interview with RT.
“The West closes its eyes to many things, based on political considerations. So far, we are talking only about words, not real actions, but even such words are a serious threat. It is enough to recall the provocation that the Ukrainian side arranged in the Kerch Strait to understand how much any talk about Ukraine’s nuclear ambitions is dangerous and inappropriate, ”Shapovalov stressed.
- Small armored artillery boats "Nikopol", "Berdyansk" and the Yany Kapu roadstead tug of the Ukrainian Navy, detained by the Russian Border Guard Service for violating the state border of Russia, in the port of Kerch
- RIA News
According to the expert, the international community should pay attention to these signals, because no one can absolutely guarantee that Ukraine will never try to get nuclear weapons.
“Such conversations need to be stopped in the root, so that no one has the illusion of impunity,” the expert stressed.
However, if Ukraine ever tries to launch a nuclear program, it will automatically lose any support and become a rogue state, experts are sure.
“The countries of the nuclear club, including the US, do not intend to tolerate the emergence of new nuclear powers. Reference to the Israeli experience, which sounds in Ukraine, is also useless, since Israel has relations with Washington in a slightly different order than Washington and Kiev. Moreover, the Israeli authorities have never confirmed that they have nuclear weapons, and they certainly never “salute” this topic, ”concluded Sergey Yermakov.