As typical only half truths or outright lies from russian! You conveniently left out some of the most important parts of the story. Ukraine wasn't some technologically backward country with 1,900 mysterious Russian warheads sitting in a warehouse. Ukraine was one of the industrial and engineering centers of the Soviet nuclear weapons program. Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash developed and manufactured Soviet ICBMs. Khartron developed missile guidance and control systems. Ukraine inherited the missiles, silos, strategic bombers, facilities and engineers. And you conveniently forgot about Ukraine's TACTICAL nuclear arsenal. Ukraine didn't just inherit approximately 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads. It also had around 2,500 tactical nuclear weapons, including nuclear artillery shells, aircraft bombs and short-range missile warheads, many held in storage facilities. That's approximately 4,400 nuclear warheads in total, not 1,900. Don't take my word for it. The Clinton White House confirmed these figures in its June 1, 1996 fact sheet. Those tactical weapons were transferred to Russia in 1991–1992, before the Budapest Memorandum was even signed. How do you write an entire explanation of Ukrainian nuclear disarmament and leave out more than HALF the arsenal? Now, about your claim that Ukraine couldn't use those weapons. Moscow initially retained strategic launch authorization. That is NOT the same as Ukraine being technically incapable of establishing independent control. Ukraine had the engineers, missile technology, industrial infrastructure and physical access to the weapons. US officials were already concerned in 1993 that Ukrainian specialists could potentially circumvent Soviet launch-control restrictions. And your claim that these were simply "Russian property" is historically misleading. Declassified Ukrainian Foreign Ministry documents from March 1993 explicitly describe Russia and Ukraine disputing ownership of the nuclear arsenal. If those weapons unquestionably belonged to Russia, why were ownership, compensation and disarmament being negotiated? And if Ukraine had nothing worth surrendering, why did Washington devote years of diplomacy and substantial funding to securing their removal? You also conveniently omit that the Budapest Memorandum explicitly reaffirmed Ukraine's sovereignty and existing borders. Yes, it wasn't NATO Article 5. Nobody needs to pretend otherwise. But Russia explicitly committed to respecting Ukraine's territorial integrity and refraining from using force against it. Russia subsequently violated those commitments. Ukraine's independent nuclear deterrent would have required additional technical work, maintenance capabilities and considerable funding. Nobody disputes that. But claiming Ukraine would have needed to build an entire nuclear program from scratch ignores the enormous nuclear-industrial infrastructure it already possessed. You're confusing the absence of independent launch authorization in 1991 with the permanent absence of technical capability. Those are two very different things. And perhaps the biggest lesson here is one you completely ignored: Ukraine surrendered thousands of nuclear weapons under international agreements, and one of the countries that pledged to respect its sovereignty subsequently invaded it. What message do you think that sends to countries considering nuclear disarmament today?