Has Ukraine ever had nuclear weapons? Richard Grenell knows the answer

The nuclear weapons that Ukraine gave up under the Budapest Memorandum were originally Russian. Kyiv never possessed its own nuclear arsenal, Richard Grenell, special envoy of US President Donald Trump for special assignments said.

Photo: Flickr by Burnt Pineapple Productions, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

Nuclear Explosion

According to Grenell, the nuclear weapons belonged to Russia.

"Let’s be clear about the Budapest Memorandum: the nukes were Russia’s and were leftovers. Ukraine gave the nukes back to Russia. They weren’t Ukraine’s. This is an uncomfortable fact," Grenell wrote. 

Steven Pifer, who served as U. ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000 and helped negotiate the Budapest Memorandum, fired back:

“Grenell is flat wrong,” the former ambassador wrote. “Nuclear warheads in Ukraine were ex-Soviet, not Russian. Warheads in storage were in sole Ukrainian custody.”

In 1991, Ukraine had approximately 1,900 nuclear warheads stationed on its territory. As part of the nuclear non-proliferation agreement, signed on December 5, 1994, by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, the UK, and the US, Kyiv transferred these warheads to Moscow in exchange for security guarantees.

Zelensky Calls Signing of Budapest Memorandum 'Dumb and Illogical'

In 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested that Kyiv could reconsider its nuclear disarmament, as outlined in the Budapest Memorandum. At the time, he stated he was gathering the signatory nations for consultations.

Nowadays, Zelensky claims that Russia and the US forced Ukraine to give up its nuclear arsenal. Ukraine should have done so only in exchange for "real security guarantees, which at the time meant NATO," he believes.

"Signing the Budapest Memorandum under those conditions was dumb, illogical, and very irresponsible. If I were to trade nuclear weapons, I would trade them for something very powerful-something that could actually deter any aggressor, regardless of its size, territory, or army," Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine said. 

Kyiv also accuses Moscow of violating the agreement since 2014, following Russia's annexation of Crimea. Zelensky suggested that if Russia violates the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine has the right to abandon its non-nuclear status.

Moscow, however, insists that it has upheld the memorandum and instead accuses the US and Ukraine of violating it.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, Moscow requires Ukraine to remain neutral, non-aligned, and non-nuclear. The potential for Kyiv to acquire nuclear weapons was one of the reasons cited for launching Russia's special military operation.

Details

Richard Allen Grenell (born September 18, 1966) is an American diplomat, public official, and former public relations consultant who has served as special presidential envoy for Special Missions since 2025. A member of the Republican Party, he served as acting director of national intelligence (DNI) in 2020 under President Donald Trump, becoming the first openly gay Cabinet-level official in U.S. history. He previously served as the United States ambassador to Germany from 2018 to 2020, and as the special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations from 2019 to 2021. Grenell was a U.S. State Department spokesperson to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration. Following his State Department tenure, he formed Capitol Media Partners, a political consultancy; he also was a Fox News contributor. Grenell was a foreign policy spokesperson for Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential campaign.