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Pyro as Bill said:
Russia has threatened to nuke Ukraine and could still send a nuke powerplant into meltdown. Ukraine's response to nuke threats is 'go for it, better to lose a city and have the US destroy the Russian military than lose the whole nation/have endless war'. The US, Russia and UK agreed to protect Ukraine's sovereignty in exchange for giving up nukes. We failed on our side of the agreement so Ukraine has every right to pursue nukes. |
Russia has soldiers in Ukraine so nuking the frontlines would wipe out thousands of Russian soldiers too.
Ukraine's never said "go for it" in regards to nukes, Ukraine wouldn't use a nuke on their own soil either because they fully intend and expect on retaking all their land, all the way down to Crimea, it's useless if it's a smouldering pile of radioactive ash. You'd sooner see Ukraine use a nuke on Russia than its own soil. An act like that would pretty much result in Zelenskyy being dragged out of office and strung from the streets. There are thousands of Ukrainian soldiers on the frontlines that would be slaughtered by a nuke.
Russia knows where the line is, they wouldn't dare to use a nuke on Ukraine soil. They will cause massive ecological damage by blowing a dam though and I consider that almost as bad but a nuke is out of the question, even China would be furious at them, once that pandora box is open it will be hard to close it, literally nobody wants nukes flying around the world.
I do agree that Ukraine has a right to pursue nukes on their own terms if they want to! But that's a conversation post-war. It's a shame but nukes are evidently a deterrent because of MAD and all that stuff. But I don't believe it would be a deterrent in the middle of a war, because I don't believe Ukraine would use them, and I believe Russia would know that too, because Russia has nukes as well, far more and far more powerful, it's a catch 22, nobody will dare to use nukes on another nuclear capable country because the nuclear capable country has nukes too.
As for Ukraine giving up nukes, I do agree that we should have stuck by and defended Ukraine more, however it would have made little difference if they still had those nukes for a number of reasons, number one is that Ukraine literally couldn't launch them, operational control of the nukes remained in Russia, Moscow had the codes needed to operate them, Russia had the command and control systems. The only way Ukraine could have got around this is by taking them completely apart and repurposes them for new weapons.
Secondly, Ukraine didn't have the technical ability nor the facilities to maintain the warheads. They lacked the ability and technical know how, they didn't have any experience in maintaining the warheads. Thirdly, many of the warheads were in crappy condition and needed replacing or were at the end of their life.
Ukraine wasn't in the best place financially, they had a huge financial burden of restructuring their entire country post-Soviet, including their military and infrastructure. They didn't have the money to maintain a nuclear programme or at least, not without severely cutting into other things. They never would have been able to maintain the weapons or produce new ones, they wouldn't have been able to use them, they made the best choice at the time which was to focus on rebuilding their country.
