Ukraine must become a nuclear power to protect itself, regardless of the consequences, Aleksey Goncharenko, an ally of former President Pyotr Poroshenko, declared on Tuesday.
Goncharenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, argued that NATO membership alone would not guarantee Ukraine’s security.
“NATO is a good thing. But NATO will not defend us. Nuclear weapons would,” Goncharenko wrote on social media. “So we should disregard everything and everyone and make the bomb. Then we’ll figure things out.”
His comments come during the 30th anniversary of the Budapest Memorandum, a multilateral agreement signed in 1994 by Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Under the memorandum, these nations agreed to denuclearize in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
Ukraine had inherited Soviet-era nuclear weapons after the dissolution of the USSR, but did not have the codes to activate them, leaving them under Moscow’s control.
In return for giving up the bombs, Kiev was promised security guarantees, which it now claims have not been honored.
Russia has pointed out that the US first broke terms of the memorandums – which Washington pointed out had no legal force – when it sanctioned Belarus in the early 2010s, and also believes that the understanding was voided following the 2014 coup in Ukraine.
Goncharenko’s remarks also reflect growing frustration in Ukraine, as its army retreats along the front lines. The MP rebuked Vladimir Zelensky for failing to secure a peace deal with Russia and NATO membership before the failed 2023 counteroffensive. He stated that the opportunity for a “normal peace treaty” had been missed.
The Foreign Ministry in Kiev issued a statement marking the anniversary of the Budapest Memorandum, criticizing Western leaders for what it called the failure to fully support Ukraine’s security needs.
The ministry said, “The development of European security architecture at the expense of Ukrainian interests rather than in alignment with them is doomed to fail,” and added that Kiev would not accept anything less than full NATO membership with all the rights, including Article 5 protection.