15
votes
Ukraine nuclear missile museum is a bitter reminder of what the country gave up
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- Authors
- Eleanor Beardsley, Polina Lytvynova
- Published
- Dec 28 2025
- Word count
- 1145 words
I feel like it’s a bit overstated. Ukraine didn’t have nuclear weapons - the USSR had nuclear weapons, stationed in Ukraine. But post independence, the Ukrainian government did not have the launch codes or any of the systems needed to use the missiles, nor any technitions or engineers capable of maintaining them.
If they still had them, maybe they could have reverse engineered the systems. But it seems unlikely.
That was also part of the reason why Ukraine agreed - they’d have these dangerous weapons they couldn’t use that could cause their own self destruction due to improper maintenance.
Are you sure about that? That seems a bit weird, if true, since AFAIK a large portion of the ICBMs in the USSR were actually first developed and built in Ukraine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivdenmash#Missiles
When it was still part of the USSR. Ukraine post independence was poverty stricken, infamously corrupt, and more Russia aligned than with the western bloc of countries. It seems unlikely the pro-Russian governments prior to the civil unrest recently would pursue independent usage of their nuclear arsenal.
I'm well aware of the conditions in Ukraine post independence, but everything you just said seems rather unrelated to the specific claim of yours that I'm doubtful of. Unless Yuzhmash/Pivdenmash employed absolutely no Ukranian engineers and technicians (unlikely), or they all left Ukraine post-independence (also unlikely, IMO) then I don't see how that claim could be true. Engineers at Yuzhmash/Pivdenmash literally developed the first Soviet ICBM, and a large portion of the Soviet nuclear arsenal was developed and manufactured there. Heck, almost 1/3 of the Soviet arsenal was actually being stored in Ukraine at the time of dissolution, which would have required a significant amount of staff capable of maintaining said arsenal. So unless all of those engineers and technicians left Ukraine post dissolution, the newly independent country should have been capable of continuing to maintain at least a portion of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
Being able to actually fire them is a different story, but I doubt that would have remained an impediment for long had they chosen to keep control of them rather than give them up.
Ukraine has, and had, an excellent capability for both technical education and technical industry.
Also, from a security perspective: physical access is total access. You could make a counter-argument about that not applying to things like encrypted documents, and extend that argument to a presumption that encryption played a role in whatever code capabilities were required to arm and deploy those weapons, but:
Physical access is total access. They could have pulled the warhead, disassembled, pulled all of the firing circuitry and rebuilt their own. Would there likely have been significant engineering challenges there? Quite possibly yes. Would it have introduced an element of uncertainty (if the systems would actually work) unless they conducted test launches and detonations? Yes. But starting with a fully functioning weapons system and launch capacity that you don't have the keys and/or codes to is dramatically different from an incapacity to co-opt those systems and gain launch and detonation capability.
Could they have fired those nukes on day 1 of the USSR breakup? Very likely not. If they had put the time, money, and engineers on the task, could they have had that capability in, say, a year or two (and possibly less depending on the amount of resources spent)? My view is a solid yes.