The Budapest Memorandum

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Ukraine inherited the Soviet-era atomic weapons on its soil and became - for a few years - the world's third biggest nuclear power. After months of tense diplomacy, the newly independent Ukraine agreed to give up the weapons in return for what were termed "assurances" about its future security and territorial integrity. These "assurances" were agreed by Russia, the USA and Britain in the Budapest Memorandum, signed in December 1994. They are now controversial given the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014 and then the rest of Ukraine in 2022. Louise Hidalgo talks to Steven Pifer, a senior American diplomat involved in the talks.

PHOTO: Pro-Ukrainian demonstrators in London in 2022 (Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:35.0	welcome to the Witness History Podcast here on the BBC World Service with me
0:39.2	DeWe Sadago and today as Russia's war in Ukraine continues, we go back to a moment in history when Ukraine was a nuclear power.
0:48.0	In 1991, Ukraine inherited a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union and the security
0:55.2	assurances that Kyiv was given by Washington and by Moscow in return for giving up
1:00.3	that nuclear arsenal are still disputed today. I've been speaking to a former American
1:05.9	diplomat involved in the talks about what the US agreed and why.
1:11.1	This weekend there's almost certain to be a huge majority in favour of Ukrainian
1:18.3	independence as many as three out of every four voters are expected to say yes to a divorce from the Soviet Union.
1:25.8	In the end, 90% of Ukrainians backed independence in that referendum in December 91.
1:31.9	It was the Soviet death knell. A week later Ukraine's president
1:35.2	met the president of Russia and Belarus and agreed the Soviet Union was no more.
1:40.9	Our estimate was that Ukraine probably had about 4,500 nuclear weapons on its territory
1:46.7	when the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991.
1:49.5	Ukraine was then the third largest nuclear power bigger than Britain, France and China combined at the time.
	...

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