A spent nuclear fuel storage site at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Enerhodar, southeastern Ukraine, 29 March 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE / SERGEI ILNITSKY
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has denied a report claiming that it had plans to build its own nuclear bomb “within months” as a fallback should US military aid to Kyiv end under the incoming Trump administration.
Writing on X on Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhiy Tykhyi stressed that Ukraine remained “committed” to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and that it did not “possess, develop, or intend to acquire nuclear weapons”.
Citing Ukraine’s close cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Tykhyi said that Kyiv was “fully transparent to its monitoring, which rules out the use of nuclear materials for military purposes”.
The denial came after a report by The Times published on Wednesday suggested that Ukraine would be able to develop nuclear warheads within months should US military support for the country end, as many expect to be the case, according to a briefing paper prepared for the Ukrainian Defence Ministry.
Lacking the time and resources needed to build uranium enrichment facilities, Ukraine would instead make use of “plutonium extracted from spent fuel rods taken from Ukraine’s nuclear reactors” to develop a “rudimentary” nuclear weapon, The Times said.
“Creating a simple atomic bomb, as the United States did within the framework of the Manhattan Project, would not be a difficult task 80 years later”, The Times cited the briefing as saying.
According to The Times, the paper was published by an “influential Ukrainian military think tank” and was due to be presented to senior members of Ukraine’s Defence Ministry and strategic industries at a conference on Wednesday.
In October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested Kyiv could look to develop nuclear weapons to guarantee its protection if the West continued to drag its feet on inviting Ukraine to join NATO.
“Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, which will serve as protection, or it must be part of some kind of alliance”, Zelensky said, adding that “apart from NATO, we do not know of such an effective alliance”.
Following the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Ukraine gained its independence and inherited the large Soviet nuclear arsenal stationed on its territory. Under the Budapest Memorandum, however, Kyiv handed those weapons over to Russia in 1994 in exchange for Moscow recognising its territorial integrity.
