I would not be altogether surprised if in the aftermath of the USSR breakup, a few nuclear weapons in Ukraine got ‘accidentally’ overlooked in the accounting. Probably with some money changing hands under the table…?
If so, what would they do with them? I doubt if a threat would be their best policy.
If I were a hawk in the Ukraine military, I would probably say it is better to ask forgiveness than to seek permission.
This could get very nasty…
I believe that Ukraine no longer has any nuclear weapons.
Well, of COURSE that’s the official line. But maybe a few just got lost somewhere in the paperwork…
Said as if nuking a city is a forgivable act.
Huh? What did I say about nuking any city?
He was just giving a factual answer. There were no implications one way or another about nuking a city.
Take to the OP about that. Ukraine DID give up its nukes…for the assurances from the west that their security would be met, and from Russia that they wouldn’t attempt to invade. Great deal, wasn’t it?
Look at the title of the post you’re replying to.
I was pointing out that the suggestion is moot.
AFAIK, every warhead was handed over to the Russians, who had their own paperwork (and therefore accurate inventories). So keeping anything back would require fabricating a completely lifelike fake and surreptitiously installing it on the weapon system in the field (which would have been under Russian satellite surveillance) well before the jointly-overseen warhead removal process.
Delivering the warhead would require surreptitiously keeping back a cruise missile (and all were accounted for as destroyed) or an aircraft you could use as a bomber (the entire fleet of nuclear-strike-capable aircraft the Ukrainians inherited from the USSR were also destroyed under strict monitoring). And then getting it through one of the most sophisticated air defense networks in the world, over hundreds of miles, in a high state of tactical and strategic alert.
And the Ukrainians’ reward for this blow would be the entire nation glassed from border to border in retaliation.
And the whole premise of the thread is that the suggestion might not be moot. Don’t fight the hypothetical and all that.
I personally agree with you, that they didn’t keep any secret nukes, because if they did, we’d have heard about them long before this point, but that’s not what the thread is about.
Not a chance. The Russians would have known exactly how many and of what type there were, and they would have been super vigilant about making sure they got them all. Ukraine probably didn’t want to try and keep one off the books in any case, as they would have had limited ability to maintain and support them, especially without Russian assistance.
However, to just play along, let’s say they had one in status somewhere and it worked. And that they also had and somehow maintained a missile to put it on. Should they nuke Moscow? Answer…no. It would do them zero good to do that except maybe to the fanatics who would want revenge. From a military perspective, it would be stupid…even if they had more to back that one up. All it would do is ensure that Ukraine became an international pariah and also give Russia the excuse to go all out, total war on Ukraine. It would only change the outcome in the sense that more people would die.
I don’t see the harm in pointing out that while we are discussing a hypothetical, it’s an unlikely hypothetical. There’s no need to get alarmist about impending nuclear war.
I sure as hell hope you’re right and there aren’t any secret nukes. But I don’t have as much faith in bureaucratic accuracy as some of the other posters, especially in a chaotic situation like the dissolution of the USSR.
And in case there is ANY confusion: I think that use of nuclear weapons (IF they had any) by desperate Ukrainians (maybe renegade military) would be a horrible disaster & might trigger WW3.
But it may not be beyond the bounds of possibility. As I said originally: this could get very nasty.
Agreed. Of anything that might happen as a result of this invasion, that to me seems like the worst thing possible.
You’re making me feel old…
Mathias Rust: German teenager who flew to Red Square - BBC News
Well, they let him pass… the shooting of the Korean aircraft above Kamchatka was so scandalous that they let Mathias flew, basically saying “one lone civil small aircraft: we’ll see were he goes”
A ballistic missile coming from Ukraine…is another matter.
The most effective use of nuclear weapons is as a deterrent. If you know you might get nuked, it really makes you stop and think about if attacking someone is the best idea.
So “secret” nukes cannot possibly be used in the most effective role for nuclear weapons.
Let’s say you’re right, that Ukraine did figure out some way to keep a few nukes, and figured out how to maintain them so as to still be viable weapons today. Sure, at the time they agreed to give up all their nukes, secrecy would have been a good idea, as otherwise, the whole treaty would have fallen apart.
But why would they still be secret today? Why would they have stayed secret for the last decade, or so, at least?
The purpose of the treaty was to ensure Ukraine’s sovereignty by trading its nukes for guarantees from the Western powers that Ukraine would be protected. Well, that part of the treaty has been well and truly broken since at least when Crimea was invaded. The US stood by and did nothing to stop that. And Russia has been putting pressure on the rest of Ukraine ever since then.
If Ukraine possessed a credible secret nuclear force, why wouldn’t they have said something about it at some point before a full-scale invasion? Because realistically, that’s the only thing that could have stopped all this, absent Putin having a sudden change of heart.
Dr. Strangelove : Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you keep it a secret! Why didn’t you tell the world, EH?
The issue is that your hypothetical doesn’t just require that a loose nuke went unaccounted for during the chaotic dissolution of the USSR. It also requires that during that chaotic formation of an independent Ukraine, the new Ukrainian government, which was the successor to a regional government that had no involvement in nuclear weapons management, managed to acquire and conceal the existence of a Soviet nuclear weapon from the (former) Soviet nuclear weapons administration.
Your hypothesis is similar to hypothesizing that when the Atlas missile silos were decommissioned, the state government of Kansas managed to abscond with one of the Atlas missiles, without the U.S. Air Force noticing.
And then kept that weapon in operational and deployable condition for decades. Through multiple regimes, some friendly to Russia and some friendly to the West.
Without anyone outside of Ukraine knowing about it.
It’s not impossible that Ukraine has an unaccounted for nuclear weapon left over from the Soviet era, but it’s dramatically unlikely.
Still, if they had one, and Russia seemed to be on the verge of capturing Kyiv and over-running the country, which right now looks like a live possibility, then, yeah, I suppose it’s likely that Ukraine would retaliate with a nuclear strike. In an existential crisis, embattled state leaders are likely to do just about anything. If they think Ukraine is about to be extinguished as an independent state anyway, it’s not like they’d have much to lose. And Ukraine has not exactly fared all that well as a part of the Russian Empire, especially in the last century.
The nightmare scenario during the breakup of the Soviet Union was that one of the warheads would end up in the hands of a rogue state or terrorist groups. I think there were people and organizations very carefully monitoring the status of all of them.