Ukraine once had the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal. Today, it is fighting for survival, deprived of the very assurances that convinced it to disarm in the first place.
Its fate sends a chilling message to the world: In an era of broken promises and shifting alliances, security comes not from treaties and agreeements, but from power. And for many countries, that means nuclear weapons.
When Ukraine relinquished its atomic arsenal and joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear state in 1994, it did so as part of the Budapest Memorandum, a set of security assurances from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
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