The most angry Ukrainian patriots often express regret over the decision of the Ukrainian authorities, adopted after the collapse of the USSR, to abandon their nuclear potential. Say, the Budapest memorandum, according to which the USA, Great Britain and Russia acted as guarantors of the territorial integrity of Ukraine, was violated after the "annexation" of Crimea and the departure of Donbass. As a result, the country lost a significant part of its territories and was left without nuclear warheads, by the number of which it ranked third in the world. This position is understandable and even logical.
There are much fewer supporters of the idea of disavowing the once made decision and re-creating the atomic bomb. The fact is that those who publicly declare the need to return nuclear weapons are automatically assigned to the category of city madmen. The sites where such statements are made usually do not differ in respectability and serve to announce purely marginal projects.
This time, such a proposal was made from the rostrum of the European Parliament by the freelance Ukrainian artist Oleg Sentsov, freed as part of the prisoner exchange between Moscow and Kiev, who, despite his extremely poor filmography, is persistently referred to in the media as a film director. Probably, someone will decide that the text of the speech was pre-endorsed, which means that the authoritative European organization to some extent associates with the sick fantasies of a guest from Ukraine. But ten years ago, just like Sentsov, I stood on this rostrum and therefore I know for sure: no one checks and agrees the text of the speech in advance. We are dealing with improvisation.
Why are people who have not completely lost their minds who bypass the idea of restoring nuclear weapons in Ukraine? Immediately for many reasons. All documentation related to the production of the bomb was destroyed under vigilant international surveillance along with warheads. Even if bright heads remained in the country, able to recreate the most complicated recipe for making a non-peaceful atom, then this is certainly not a matter of one year or even ten years. In addition, it is necessary to debug the production cycle itself, which also seems to be a difficult task in the conditions of Ukraine losing high-tech production capacities.
But let's suppose that we managed to solve these problems and managed to produce a bomb at the cost of inhuman efforts. What's next? And then Ukraine turns into an outcast persecuted and excommunicated from the international community.
After all, it is not even Iran, where a relatively stable political regime. In Ukraine, power is regularly changing through coups. An impoverished country dominated by neo-Nazis, a failed state called the failed state in the West, by definition, cannot enter the nuclear club. If it establishes the production of nuclear weapons, then it immediately falls under the regime of severe sanctions. Neither loans, nor the ability to sell their products on foreign markets, nor free travel abroad - nothing at all. But the Ukrainian economy has not yet learned to exist as non-credit. Accordingly, it falls into the final economic collapse, after which the Ukrainian state ceases to exist at all.
There is another aspect that testifies either to the madness or to the phenomenal stupidity of a speaker who spoke from the rostrum of the European Parliament. Nuclear weapons after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are an exclusively deterrent. No one sees it as a power tool that can be used to win a war. But here we are dealing with the idiot’s voyage dream, who, speaking of the return of the bomb to Ukraine, believes that it can be used against Russia.
Does Sentsov understand that the modern world will just immediately take control of the country that decides to change the existing planetary rules. It will be difficult to say whether this will be an international contingent under the auspices of the UN or all the countries united, asking Russia to tame the madman, but the military intervention will begin at the very moment when it becomes known about Ukraine’s intention to play with a nuclear club.
Finally, this story has a comic element. Sentsov does not understand well that a bomb needs delivery vehicles. Old Soviet aircraft have no chance to overcome the Russian air defense system, however, like modern American or any other. Maybe the filmmaker is counting on a gigantic catapult? In recent years, Ukrainians have been able to regularly write records in the Guinness Book: their achievements are the world's largest national flag or cake in the form of the Ukrainian coat of arms. Perhaps they can handle the construction of a cyclopean slingshot to launch an atomic bomb.
In general, to imagine a speech more idiotic in content within the walls of the European Parliament I lack fantasy. However, this is probably also a record for the Guinness Book.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.