In this episode of The Arms Control Primer, host Dr Alexander Bollfrass is joined by Dr Polina Sinovets and Darya Dolzikova to explore Ukraine’s nuclear past – from its role in the Soviet nuclear weapons programme to its decision to relinquish nuclear arms in the 1990s – tracing how Ukraine came to host thousands of warheads, why it joined the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapon state, and how the Budapest Memorandum shaped its security thinking; set against Russia’s full-scale invasion, the conversation examines nuclear coercion in the war, the limits of political assurances, and what Ukraine’s experience suggests for deterrence, non-proliferation, and security guarantees today.
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