Ukraine has spoken out after a think tank reportedly claimed that Kyiv would be able to develop a nuclear weapon within months, if Donald Trump follows through on threats to withdraw US aid as President.
According to a research paper prepared for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence by the Centre for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies (CACDS), the country would have the means to build a basic device, one tenth of the power of the “Fat Man” bomb American forces dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, The Times reported.
The authors argued that the weapon could be used as a bargaining chip in any peace negotiation with Russia if the flow of weapons from Washington is cut off.
Though Ukraine wouldn’t have time to develop huge secure facilities to enrich uranium in, it would be “not difficult” to use spent nuclear fuel from its nine power plants to create a basic atomic device, the report claimed.
The paper was authored by Oleksii Yizhak, head of department at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, a research centre that acts as an advisory body to the presidential office and the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, The Times reports.
Yizhak suggested that the makeshift weapon would be able to destroy “an entire Russian airbase or concentrated military, industrial or logistics installations. The exact nuclear yield would be unpredictable because it would use different isotopes of plutonium”.
The paper, which was reportedly shared with defence officials, was not endorsed by the Kyiv government, but lays out the legal basis for Ukraine withdrawing from its international non-proliferation commitments if the US steps back.
But today Heorhii Tykhyi, spokesman for the Ukraine‘s foreign ministry, firmly rejected any suggestion Ukraine was considering developing a nuke.
“We do not possess, develop, or intend to acquire nuclear weapons,” he said, as per The Sun.
“Ukraine works closely with the IAEA and is fully transparent to its monitoring, which rules out the use of nuclear materials for military purposes.”
Ukraine once briefly had the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal after gaining independence, with Moscow leaving the potentially world-ending weapons in the country after the Soviet Union fell.
But Kyiv opted to denuclearise completely in the mid 1990s in exchange for the security guarantees from the US, the UK and Russia, as part of an agreement known called the Budapest Memorandum.
The US has been among Ukraine‘s biggest backers since Vladimir Putin‘s invasion began in February 2022, providing billions in military aid.
But the landslide election of Donald Trump, who has consistently cast doubt on further American money being spent on supporting Ukraine‘s fightback, could have massive implications for the conflict.
Trump has previously insisted he could speak to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin and settle the conflict “in a day”.
But Nicholas Drummond, a consultant specialising in land warfare, said the two sides’ firm positions on territory will make negotiation difficult and may only serve to help Putin in the long-run.
In a piece for The Daily Express, he said a ceasefire agreement could bring short term peace, but “it would be a victory that would strengthen [Putin] at home and in the eyes of China, North Korea, and Iran”.
Drummond also echoed concerns from analysts that a pause in the fighting could give the Russian leader “breathing space he desperately needs to rebuild his shattered economy and army”.
“China and North Korea’s massive military inventories could help Putin to regenerate his armed forces in less than five years,” he said, adding: “However long it takes, a re-constituted Russia would be more lethal, bolder, and less easy to deter.”
