You keep bringing up that point but I don’t think it means what you think it means. Sure, they didn’t have the launch codes but they were in the physical possession of nuclear weapons stationed on their territory by the USSR. At the very least, this meant they had weapons-grade highly enriched fissile material, even the possibility of which makes neighboring countries nervous, as we are all learning in Iran. They could’ve disassembled them, reverse engineered them, destroyed them, or whatever, but they chose to give them to the successor state of the USSR for the hollow promise of territorial integrity. They could’ve developed their own nukes, but they didn’t. Instead, they trusted the deal and the security guarantees. For that deal, and for the act of breaking it in 2014 and in 2022, it makes no difference whether Ukraine had the capacity of launching those nukes in the 90s.
Yeah, guess what bud, nobody in the west wanted Ukraine to have nukes either. There was literally no possibility of that happening. They didn’t do it because literally nobody would’ve allowed them to do it. They trusted the west, and the west cynically used them as a proxy. While scumbags like you keep pretending it’s about democracy or some shit.
Welp, there goes the civility. Nevertheless, I wish you a genuinely good day as well as some sense.
As for the actual argument in your comment: Why are you blaming the West for not following through on their security guarantees? A few comments back you had pointed out how stupid it were if they went to all out war against Russia. Why aren’t you blaming Russia for not following through on their security guarantees by, IDK, not invading Ukraine? Double-think…
Edit: Had forgotten to pull apart the quote from the paragraph beneath. Now corrected.
The west never offered any security guarantees to Ukraine and Ukraine keeping nuclear material was never on the table. So, your whole premise is utter nonsense. Meanwhile, Russia was perfectly fine with Ukraine doing its own thing until the west overthrew the government in Ukraine in 2014. The only double-think here is you avoiding the elephant in the room.
They did though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum#Content:
Russia, the UK, and the US agreed that they would respect the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, not attack Ukraine except in self-defense, refrain from economic coercion, and immediately seek action in case another signatory attacks Ukraine with nuclear weapons.
I find it interesting that you insist on the Budapest memorandum being meaningless as an argument to defend Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Might as well play diplomacy like up to WW1 and enter wars over coffee and scones. What’s the point of this all if one hegemon just gets to invade their neighbors willy-nilly? If international agreements don’t have any meaning, then why the heck do we even make them? Why did Russia sign the memorandum? Maybe to buy time in their hour of greatest weakness and gather strength to subdue Ukraine 20 years later?
Yeah that applied when Ukraine was actually sovereign before the coup in 2014 by the west. Shock and surprise, Russia was not attacking Ukraine back then.
You keep bringing up that point but I don’t think it means what you think it means. Sure, they didn’t have the launch codes but they were in the physical possession of nuclear weapons stationed on their territory by the USSR. At the very least, this meant they had weapons-grade highly enriched fissile material, even the possibility of which makes neighboring countries nervous, as we are all learning in Iran. They could’ve disassembled them, reverse engineered them, destroyed them, or whatever, but they chose to give them to the successor state of the USSR for the hollow promise of territorial integrity. They could’ve developed their own nukes, but they didn’t. Instead, they trusted the deal and the security guarantees. For that deal, and for the act of breaking it in 2014 and in 2022, it makes no difference whether Ukraine had the capacity of launching those nukes in the 90s.
Yeah, guess what bud, nobody in the west wanted Ukraine to have nukes either. There was literally no possibility of that happening. They didn’t do it because literally nobody would’ve allowed them to do it. They trusted the west, and the west cynically used them as a proxy. While scumbags like you keep pretending it’s about democracy or some shit.
Welp, there goes the civility. Nevertheless, I wish you a genuinely good day as well as some sense. As for the actual argument in your comment: Why are you blaming the West for not following through on their security guarantees? A few comments back you had pointed out how stupid it were if they went to all out war against Russia. Why aren’t you blaming Russia for not following through on their security guarantees by, IDK, not invading Ukraine? Double-think…
Edit: Had forgotten to pull apart the quote from the paragraph beneath. Now corrected.
The west never offered any security guarantees to Ukraine and Ukraine keeping nuclear material was never on the table. So, your whole premise is utter nonsense. Meanwhile, Russia was perfectly fine with Ukraine doing its own thing until the west overthrew the government in Ukraine in 2014. The only double-think here is you avoiding the elephant in the room.
They did though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum#Content: Russia, the UK, and the US agreed that they would respect the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, not attack Ukraine except in self-defense, refrain from economic coercion, and immediately seek action in case another signatory attacks Ukraine with nuclear weapons.
I find it interesting that you insist on the Budapest memorandum being meaningless as an argument to defend Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Might as well play diplomacy like up to WW1 and enter wars over coffee and scones. What’s the point of this all if one hegemon just gets to invade their neighbors willy-nilly? If international agreements don’t have any meaning, then why the heck do we even make them? Why did Russia sign the memorandum? Maybe to buy time in their hour of greatest weakness and gather strength to subdue Ukraine 20 years later?
Yeah that applied when Ukraine was actually sovereign before the coup in 2014 by the west. Shock and surprise, Russia was not attacking Ukraine back then.