A briefing for government officials said the report states that Ukraine has the resources and expertise to be forced to produce large quantities of nuclear weapons on its own immediately.
A briefing prepared for Ukraine's Ministry of Defense is said to have told policymakers that spent fuel rods could be used to quickly develop a rudimentary nuclear bomb and a long-range ballistic missile to deliver it, with only a small He says this can be accomplished in a few months.
claimed to be exclusive by times The London document presented The paper said it exemplifies a potential backstop to protect itself from the Russian Federation if the United States under President Trump withdraws military aid. President Trump has made it clear that he wants to bring peace to Europe as soon as possible, but he has not yet clarified how he will do so. Many of the options open to him do not correspond with Kiev's official policy, since the only acceptable end to the war is complete victory over Russia.
The paper cites important parts of a report written for the Ukrainian government's Army, Conversion and Disarmament Research Center. Oleksey Izhakalso a senior leader at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, a government think tank, and both work in official capacities advising the Ukrainian president. “Creating a simple atomic bomb, as the United States did within the framework of the Manhattan Project, will not be a difficult task in 80 years,'' it is said to have said.
The author, Mr. Ihak, is said to have reflected as follows. “I was surprised at the respect the United States has for the Russian nuclear threat. It could have cost us a war… They treat nuclear weapons like some kind of god. So , it may be time for us to pray to this God.”
The press conference may have been aimed solely at revealing top Ukrainian ministers, given that key passages were disseminated in widely read English-language newspapers, or, in part, in Moscow and Washington, D.C. It is understandably difficult to determine whether this was intended as a veiled threat to both countries. Please check immediately.
Indeed, overnight the Ukrainian government issued a counter-argument that the country is bound by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. However, this denial suggests that the country has legal grounds to unilaterally withdraw these obligations, given that other partners may claim that they have not fulfilled their obligations. The briefing was conducted without touching upon the actual point of the belief.
Whatever the truth, the emergence of a new rogue nuclear state willing to use immature, low-yield nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe to defend its sovereignty against aggressors is not welcomed by Western capital, and especially by Western capital. is certainly not welcome. European countries threatened by drifting fallout clouds.
Regarding the technical aspects of device production, the report states that Ukraine has access to a large amount of spent fuel rods from operating nuclear power plants, which is enough to produce “several hundred” weapons. There is. Although this material is not considered suitable for modern nuclear weapons by conventional nuclear powers, it is said to be sufficient to produce basic devices with relatively low yields.
According to the report, this is an implosion type like the one used in the first ever nuclear explosion, Trinity, and the Nagasaki atomic bomb, Fat Man, in which a plutonium core surrounded by a sphere of conventional explosives was ignited at the same time. It is reported that this is a compressed type. A substance that causes nuclear fission.
Given the quality of plutonium obtained from spent fuel rods, this device would be significantly less powerful than the Nagasaki weapon, but it would be powerful enough to destroy air bases and cities in one hit. The report states: “The weight of nuclear reactor plutonium available to Ukraine can be estimated at 7 tons… Having a significant nuclear arsenal would require much less material… Enough for hundreds of warheads with a yield…enough to destroy entire Russian air bases or concentrated military, industrial, and logistics facilities.The exact nuclear yield would be unpredictable. ”
Regarding distribution, Valentin Badrach, director of the National Institute for Strategic Studies, reports as follows: times “Within six months, Ukraine will be able to demonstrate that it has long-range ballistic missile capabilities. We will have missiles with a range of 1,000 km.”
1,000 kilometers is about 600 miles, and Moscow is about 300 miles from the nearest Ukrainian territory.
As it stands, Ukraine is bound by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), a successor to the Budapest Memorandum signed when Ukraine gave up its vast inventory of Soviet-era nuclear weapons after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. . On Wednesday night, when Kiev reacted to the appearance of a briefing on nuclear weapons, they specifically mentioned this, and a government spokesperson said: We have no intention of possessing, developing, or acquiring nuclear weapons. Ukraine works closely with the IAEA and is fully transparent with IAEA oversight to exclude the use of nuclear materials for military purposes. ”
But when Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal, the world's third largest since 1994, it was in exchange for guarantees from the United States, Britain and the Russian Federation that it would respect its borders and not try to coerce the country. As stated in a new briefing from the National Institute for Strategic Studies, there is a clear case that the treaty could be legally set aside by its own terms because of Russian aggression.
“The violation of the Memorandum of Understanding by the nuclear-armed Russian Federation constitutes a formal basis for withdrawing from the NPT and a moral reason to reconsider the non-nuclear option made in early 1994,” the report said.
This paper is not the first time that Ukraine has dangled the possibility of becoming a nuclear power before the United States, perhaps as a lever to achieve long-term strategic goals. In September, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy met with then-former President Donald Trump and said that in terms of guaranteeing Ukraine's future independence, there are two possible paths: NATO membership or Ukraine's independent nuclear deterrent. He has expressed his position that there is.
As with this week's nuclear report, these statements were quickly qualified, but the seeds were still being planted. “In my conversation with Donald Trump, I told him this is what will happen: What is the exit? Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons and it will be the defense of our country,” Zelenskiy said at the time. Or we need to form some sort of alliance. We don't know of any active alliances at the moment, apart from NATO.”
In October, President Zelenskiy spoke at the Council of Europe summit in Brussels about Ukraine's disarmament compared to countries that maintained stockpiles after the Cold War: All? No, it's Ukraine. Who is fighting today? Ukraine… Ukraine should have nuclear weapons and it should protect us or we should form some kind of alliance. ”
as It was reported in Ukrainian media last month.President Zelenskiy even claims that President-elect Trump responded to these points by saying, “That was a valid argument.” At the time, it was said that it could take years for Ukraine to develop its own nuclear weapons, but even if it tried to do so, it would face significant challenges with its Western backers, who universally support nuclear non-proliferation. It will inflame goodwill. This is to say nothing of the attitude of Russia, the aggressor who has repeatedly threatened nuclear attacks against Western countries over their support for Ukraine against the invasion.
