Millman doesn’t see how the country could have kept its nukes:
Was it even plausible that Ukraine could have held on to an independent nuclear deterrent after the collapse of the Soviet Union? The answer is almost certainly, “no.” Indeed, it’s hard to imagine any action that would more greatly have imperiled the stabilization of the post-Soviet order than such a determination on Ukraine’s part. Western and Russian interests were aligned in wanting to see Ukraine denuclearized; an independent nuclear Ukraine would have been treated as a dangerous rogue state. Russia’s ability to project power in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union was extremely limited, but Ukraine’s ability to defend itself was even more ephemeral. The best evidence that Ukraine had no real choice but to denuclearize is precisely that Ukraine got almost nothing in exchange for agreeing to hand over its Soviet nuclear weapons.
Earlier Dish on Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament here.
The Dish 