Clinton and Yeltsin Sign Nuclear Pact: Ukraine Disarms

Ukraine inherited the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, roughly 1,900 strategic warheads sitting in silos and on bombers scattered across its territory. The weapons had been built, deployed, and controlled by Moscow, but they now sat inside a sovereign nation that had no desire to return them without guarantees. The agreement signed by Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin in Moscow on January 14, 1994, was the centerpiece of a deal to disarm Ukraine in exchange for security assurances that would later prove devastatingly hollow. The negotiations had been grinding forward since 1992. Ukraine's president, Leonid Kravchuk, understood that his country lacked the technical infrastructure and launch codes to actually use the weapons, but the warheads represented enormous bargaining leverage. Russia wanted them back. The United States wanted them eliminated. Ukraine wanted guarantees that its territorial sovereignty would be respected once it gave up the only deterrent a post-Soviet state could possess. The January 14 accords were part of what became the Trilateral Statement, committing Ukraine to transfer all warheads to Russia for dismantlement. In return, Russia would provide nuclear fuel rods for Ukraine's power plants, and the United States would fund the disarmament process through the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. The framework led directly to the Budapest Memorandum of December 1994, in which the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia formally pledged to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Clinton and Yeltsin also announced that both nations would stop targeting each other's cities with nuclear missiles, a largely symbolic gesture since retargeting could be accomplished in minutes. The more consequential legacy of the accords was the disarmament itself: by 1996, all nuclear warheads had been transferred from Ukraine to Russia. Twenty years later, Russia annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine, violating every assurance made in the Budapest Memorandum. The agreement that was once celebrated as a triumph of nonproliferation became the most cited example of why nations should never voluntarily surrender their nuclear weapons.