The 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is one of the most important and, with 191 signatory states, most comprehensive treaties of humankind. The NPT forms, together with similar conventions on chemical and biological weapons, a global regime of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Since 2014, the non-proliferation regime has, however, acquired a strange new meaning in connection with the Russian annexations of Ukrainian territories, and Moscow’s genocidal policies in Ukraine.  

The NPT allows Russia, as an official nuclear-weapon state, to build and acquire atomic warheads. At the same time, the NPT explicitly forbids Ukraine, as an official non-nuclear-weapon state, to do the same. 

Ukraine’s non-nuclear allies, from Canada in the West to Japan in the East, are similarly bound by the NPT as well as the conventions on chemical and biological arms, to their statuses as purely conventional military powers. The NPT thus prevented in past Ukraine’s deterrence of, and prevents today, Ukraine’s defense against the official nuclear-weapon state Russia. 

The 1994 Budapest Memorandum as an NPT Appendix 

Most oddly, the emerging post-Soviet Ukrainian state in the early 1990s possessed the world’s third-largest arsenal of nuclear warheads, an inheritance from the Soviet Union that had broken up in August-December 1991. 

Immediately after Ukraine acquired independence the number of its atomic arms was, for a brief period, larger than the sum of China’s, France’s, and the United Kingdom’s weapons of mass destruction taken together. At the last summit of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe, before it transformed into the OSCE, at Hungary’s capital, in December 1994, the Russian Federation, United States, and United Kingdom signed with Ukraine the fateful Memorandum on security assurances in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. 

The short document, which became known as “the Budapest Memorandum,” duplicated two similar declarations that were specially designed for the post-Soviet holders of parts of the former USSR’s atomic arsenal: Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Being the so-called "depository governments" of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Moscow, Washington, and London became in 1994, and are still today, the guarantors of the borders of these three former Russian colonies and Soviet republics. 

Recently, the story of Ukraine’s decision to abandon its Soviet atomic arms heritage has been masterfully detailed by Harvard’s nuclear historian Mariana Budjeryn in her award-winning book Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine.

Russia started violating the Budapest Memorandum and NPT’s logic already before the beginning of its war against Ukraine and its occupation of Crimea in February 2014. For instance, Russia tried to infringe upon Ukraine’s state territory and border, in 2003, with a unilateral and eventually abortive infrastructure project approaching the Ukrainian island of Tuzla in the Kerch Straits of the Black Sea. 

Ten years later, Moscow attempted to prevent Kyiv’s upcoming conclusion of an already initialed Association Agreement with the European Union. Throughout 2013, it exerted heavy economic and political pressure on Kyiv, a kind of behavior explicitly forbidden by the Budapest Memorandum’s third article.  

Since February 2014, Russia has ruthlessly attacked Ukraine by military and non-military means, as well as with regular and irregular forces. Moscow has also been violating ever more unashamedly and demonstratively the security guarantees it gave to Kyiv, in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Moscow’s actions have thereby been increasingly contradicting and even reversing the logic of the non-proliferation regime, as in place since 1970.  

How Moscow Put the NPT on Its Head 

The NPT is today, together with similar conventions on biological and chemical weapons, a central part of the post-1945 UN-based global security system. As the legal successor of the USSR, founder and depositary state of the NPT, as well as an explicit guarantor of the inviolability of Ukraine’s borders in the Budapest Memorandum, Russia has put the purpose of the non-proliferation regime on its head: The NPT’s permission of Russian possession of nuclear weapons has helped Moscow to conduct its expansionist and genocidal war against Ukraine. 

The NPT’s prohibition of Ukrainian possession of nuclear weapons has prevented Kyiv’s effective deterrence and defense against the Russian onslaught since 2014. 

The NPT enabled Moscow to threaten not only Ukraine but also its allies, especially the non-nuclear ones, with atomic annihilation if they continued to assist the Ukrainian resistance against Russia’s unashamed territorial enlargement and continued terror against civilians. 

The NPT’s authorization of Russian possession of nuclear weapons has had, in the past, and will have, in the foreseeable future, the effect of inhibiting military support for Ukraine from international law-abiding countries. This inhibition concerns both, the provision to Ukraine with, and permission to use, certain particularly effective conventional military technologies, such as Germany’s TAURUS cruise missiles, and the deployment of allied troops on Ukrainian ground, whether they are sent by NATO, the EU, or an ad hoc coalition of Ukraine-friendly nation-states. 

If Kyiv had, in 2014, owned nuclear weapons, Russia would most probably not have attacked Ukraine and risked the erasure of entire Russian cities. 

If Moscow had, on the other hand, not possessed nuclear weapons in 2014, Ukraine’s Western allies would most probably have come quickly to Kyiv’s help. 

A coalition of the willing would likely have liberated, in 2014 or 2015, the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula and occupied parts of the Donbas in the same way in which a U.S.-led coalition, in 1991, liberated Kuwait which had been occupied and annexed by Iraq the year before. 

The rules established by the NPT have thus facilitated both, the start of Russia’s territorial expansion and genocidal war in 2014, and the following unwillingness of the international community to resolutely reverse Moscow’s initial land capture, prevent Russia’s further expansion, and forestall the ongoing genocide in Ukraine. 

Conclusions and Policy Recommendations 

The nuclear non-proliferation regime went into force in 1970. It has since drawn its legitimacy from being an encompassing agreement that helps to limit the emergence and escalation of wars as well as to prevent the use of nuclear weapons for expansionist aims. 

Yet, it is today generating rather different effects, in connection with Russia’s annihilation war on, and capture of land from, the NPT signatory state Ukraine. As a result, the functioning and future of the NPT are closely linked to the course, results, and repercussions of the Russo-Ukrainian War. 

Considering the high relevance for humankind of a continuation of the non-proliferation regime, the following six policies can be recommended to actors interested in its defense: 

1. All signatory states of the NPT concerned about its preservation should provide the non-nuclear weapon state Ukraine with, as much as they can, military and non-military support enabling Kyiv to achieve a convincing victory on the battlefield and liberation of its territories currently illegally occupied by Russia. 

2. All signatory states of the NPT concerned about its preservation should demand from Moscow an immediate end to its threats of a nuclear escalation, as well as warn Russia and its allies that such an escalation would trigger resolute military and non-military counter-reaction from them.  

3. All signatory states of the NPT concerned about its preservation should effectively sanction and publicly condemn the nuclear-weapon state Russia as long it continues waging an expansionist war on the territory of the non-nuclear-weapon state Ukraine.  

4. All signatory states of the NPT concerned about its preservation should insist on a just peace for Ukraine including full restoration of its territorial integrity, full preservation of national sovereignty, the full return of all prisoners of war and deported civilians including children, and full compensation for Ukraine’s destruction via Russian reparations. 

5. All non-governmental organizations, businesses, and individuals favoring a continuation of the non-proliferation regime should support, with whatever means they have, Ukraine’s victory and recovery as well as publicly oppose and sanction Russia with all instruments available to them. 

6. Washington and London have, as depositary governments of the 1968 NPT and as signatories of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, special responsibilities vis-à-vis Kyiv. The United States and the United Kingdom should therefore offer Ukraine a transformation of their thirty-year-old security assurances into a mutual aid pact. A tripartite fully-fledged military alliance would protect Ukraine until it becomes a member of NATO and also allow international utilization of increasing Ukrainian war-related know-how and resources. All other signatory states of the NPT should be invited to join this trilateral defense treaty and to thereby contribute upholding the logic of the non-proliferation regime. 

Dr. Andreas Umland is an analyst at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies (SCEEUS) of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI).

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