Military expert Viktor Litovkin, commenting on the statement by Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky about the possibility of Ukraine withdrawing from the Budapest Nuclear Weapons Agreement, said that there would be no damage from this. He spoke about this on February 19 in an interview with the REN TV channel.
Litovkin called a possible withdrawal from the agreement a symbolic step – according to him, in this case, Ukraine will be able to say that it has the right to produce nuclear weapons.
However, the military expert noted that there were no complexes for enriching uranium ore in Ukraine, therefore Ukraine can never create nuclear weapons, and the statements are demagogy.
“And that he [Зеленский] I didn’t say anything there, Ukraine is no longer able to produce missiles, and it has never been able to make nuclear weapons and will never be able to do it, ”said the channel’s interlocutor.
The expert also called the statements made by Kiev that the country “gave away its nuclear weapons” as a lie.
“Nuclear weapons belonged to the Soviet Union. Never belonged to Ukraine. Ukraine has never produced it, and it did not even have access keys to these nuclear weapons,” Litovkin said.
According to the expert, when Russia became the successor to the Soviet Union, all nuclear weapons, at the insistence of the United States, Great Britain and other NATO countries, were taken to Russian territory. And then it was already formalized by the Budapest Memorandum.
Earlier on Saturday, Zelensky announced at the Munich Conference his intention to initiate a summit of the countries participating in the Budapest Memorandum, which provided for its renunciation of nuclear weapons. at the same time, the Ukrainian leader allowed the country to withdraw from the Budapest Nuclear Weapons Agreement, which established the non-nuclear status of the state.
According to him, if the negotiations and consultations fail again or, as a result of them, no concrete decisions are made on security guarantees for Ukraine, then the Ukrainian side will have the right to believe that the Budapest Agreement does not work, and all package decisions of 1994 and the obligations of the guarantor countries will be put in doubt.
On the same day, German Ambassador to Ukraine Anka Feldhusen stated that the Budapest Memorandum is not a guarantee of Ukraine’s renunciation of nuclear weapons due to the ambiguous legal status of the document.
The Budapest Memorandum was signed by Ukraine, the USA, Great Britain and the Russian Federation on December 5, 1994. The document provided for guarantees of the security and territorial integrity of Ukraine in exchange for Kiev’s renunciation of nuclear weapons. In return, the above countries pledged to respect the sovereignty of Ukraine and not to use these weapons against the state.