In December 1991 the newly independent Ukraine woke up as, on paper, the world’s third nuclear power. Soviet forces on its territory included around 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads, thousands of tactical weapons, 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 44 strategic bombers. Ten years later every warhead had gone to Russia and almost every missile and bomber had been cut up or handed over. The way that happened, and what Ukraine was promised in return, is still argued over today.

Third-Largest, but Not in Ukrainian Hands

The numbers made Ukraine’s inherited arsenal the third largest in the world, behind only Russia and the United States. Control was another matter. Operational command of the weapons, including the codes needed to launch them, remained in Moscow. Kyiv held the hardware on its soil, but not the ability to use the weapons on its own.

The World’s Largest Blackjack Fleet

For aviation, the most striking part of the inheritance sat at Pryluky, east of Kyiv. Two squadrons of the 184th Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment there flew 19 Tu-160s, more of the Soviet Union’s most modern swing-wing bombers than Russia itself was left with. Another regiment at Uzyn, south of Kyiv, flew about 25 Tu-95MS Bears. With them came more than a thousand Kh-55 nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

What Ukraine Was Promised

Ukraine agreed in the 1992 Lisbon Protocol to join the START I treaty, and in a January 1994 trilateral statement with the United States and Russia committed to eliminate the weapons in return for economic support and security assurances. On 5 December 1994, in Budapest, Ukraine, the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia signed the memorandum that went with Ukraine’s accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear state.

The wording matters. The signatories pledged to respect Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and existing borders, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against it. According to Harvard’s Belfer Center, Ukraine’s leaders had pushed hard for legally binding security guarantees, but the United States was unwilling to give them, and the negotiators instead drafted assurances. The memorandum specified no consequences for a violation, and it did not oblige the United States or the United Kingdom to come to Ukraine’s defence. By 1996 all of the warheads had been transferred to Russia.

Cut Up, or Flown to Russia

The bombers went last. Under the US-funded Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction programme, the first was demolished at Pryluky on 16 November 1998. In 1999 Kyiv and Moscow agreed a deal under which eight Tu-160s, three Tu-95MS and several hundred Kh-55 cruise missiles went to Russia to settle Ukrainian debts for natural gas; the first two Tu-160s flew to Russia on 5 November 1999. The remaining bombers were dismantled, the last Tu-160 in February 2001 and the last Tu-95MS in May 2001. One Tu-160 and one Tu-95MS were kept for the Museum of Long-Range and Strategic Aviation at Poltava.

The story has a bitter coda. In 2024 an RFE/RL investigation, comparing serial numbers in archives and aviation registries, concluded that at least six of the Tu-160s Ukraine handed over in 1999 are in active Russian service, and that Kh-55 missiles from the same transfer have also been used against Ukraine.

What the Viral Post Gets Right

The video doing the rounds, filmed at a nuclear museum in Ukraine, is right that Ukraine inherited the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal and gave it up in the 1990s in exchange for commitments from the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia. Two points need precision. Ukraine never had operational control of those weapons; the launch codes stayed in Moscow. And the Budapest Memorandum offered security assurances, not a promise of protection: it bound the signatories to respect Ukraine’s borders and not to threaten it, but did not commit anyone to defend it.

Sources: Mariana Budjeryn and Matthew Bunn, “Budapest Memorandum at 25: Between Past and Future”, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School (March 2020); Nuclear Threat Initiative, “Ukraine Nuclear Disarmament”; James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, “Ukraine Bomber Decommissioning and Transfer Chronology” (NTI); Thomas Newdick, The War Zone (17 December 2021); RFE/RL investigation via Kyiv Independent (26–27 November 2024).