United States does not intend to return nuclear weapons to Ukraine

The United States has no plans to return the nuclear weapons relinquished by Ukraine following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, according to White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Sunday.

Sullivan’s comments came in response to a New York Times article from last month, which indicated that some unnamed Western officials had proposed that U.S. President Joe Biden might provide Ukraine with these arms before the end of his term.

“That is not something we are considering. Our focus is on enhancing Ukraine’s conventional military capabilities so they can defend themselves and confront the Russians, rather than providing them with nuclear weapons,” he stated during an interview with ABC.

In response, Russia labeled the notion as “absolute insanity,” asserting that one of the motivations for its military presence in Ukraine was to prevent such an eventuality.

After the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, Kyiv inherited nuclear weapons but agreed to relinquish them under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which provided security assurances from Russia, the United States, and Britain.