Trump has stated he will cut American aid to Ukraine, which makes a majority of total aid. Recently Zelensky stated that if Ukraine’s only hope for sovereignty is its own nuclear arsenal, they will build it.
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My sympathy for Ukraine says they should.
My survival instincts as an American would say they shouldn’t because then Russia get big mad and nuke us. I don’t enjoy radiation, so my survival brain is saying they shouldn’t.
But my suicidal brain after seeing the result of the US presidential election says: Fuck it, let them do whatever, hell we can even gift some to them. Climate is fucked anyways. Lets pretend this is a sandbox game and see what happens. What’s the worst that can happen, die? Hehe I’ve been dying inside and November 5 just cut off my life support.
So it depends which alter ego you ask. Ye know, like the angel and demon on your shoulders.
Edit: holy shit its 2AM and I’m wasting time on Lemmy. that just shows how dead on the inside i am… cant sleep, fucking election anxiety.
Lets pretend this is a sandbox game
Stop all childish talk. It is dead serious.
Fighting global warming with… nuclear winter.
🤔c/UnexpectedFuturama
I thought futurama fought it by pushing the earth into a more distant orbit by means of robot ass blasting
That too, but there was also a gag in an episode where they’re at a ski lodge where Fry says, “Thank god global warming never happened,” and Leela responds, “Actually it did, but thank god for nuclear winter.”
Obviously. Instead of building one themselves though, they should probably buy it from France or the UK, or team up with Germany/Japan/South Korea on a joint program. Since their future looks unreliable too.
Obviously, yes. That’s the only guarantee that nations have not to be fucked with.
Sadly, they don’t have enough time to build a defense. Trump is going to put them out for slaughter.
Numerous other entities are at high risk in the immediate future, eg: Palestinians, Taiwan, Japanese islands… etc.
Trump and Repugnants are not just the end of the U.S., but, also the World as we know it.
I wish y’all the best and I apologize for the ensuing insanity.
Everyone in this thread is talking like they could. Even if the country wasn’t mired in a war of attrition, the process of building it takes time, expertise, money, and materials. They only have some of those. And not any money.
It would take them only a few months. Ukraine is filled with Soviet nuclear technology and Soviet nuclear engineers. They have nuclear reactors. Ukraine is richer than North Korea, and they have their own uranium mines. North Korea spent a couple billion on their nukes, but Ukraine’s military budget is $82B a year, so they could easily surpass North Korea.
Geopolitics experts agree that Ukraine could build a nuke if they wanted to. The issue is that the west definitely would not want to see a world where countries threatened by Russia turn to nuclear proliferation.
Here’s a video from a Danish military analyst talking about the decisions that have to be made on how to secure Ukraine after the war:
It’s important to note, Ukraine is willing to freeze the front line now in return for security guarantees. But If the US or the EU don’t step up to end the war soon, Ukrainian nuclear engineers will.
That was an interesting watch, but he doesn’t put a clear timeline on how long it would take. I found this article that notes that:
The Prydniprovsky Chemical Plant in the city of Kamianske in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast processed uranium ore for the Soviet nuclear program, preparing yellowcake, an intermediate step in the processing of uranium ore.
It goes on to interview a couple of engineer about what they could be expected to produce, by when, and with what level of discresion:
Robert Kelley, an engineer with over 35 years of experience in the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons complex, said that it would be possible for Ukraine to create a primitive uranium fission bomb within five years.
“It’s a fairly simple thing to do in the 21st century,” he told the Kyiv Independent.
It would be much more difficult for Ukraine to build a plutonium fission bomb, and it would be harder to hide, Kelley argued. It would take five to 10 years to build a plutonium reactor, he added.
In contrast with a fission bomb, a “hydrogen bomb would be incredibly complicated,” Kelley said. “No way in the world would (Ukraine) be able to create it,” he added.
Kelley also said that Ukraine might be able to create a crude nucleardevice without assistance from other countries. For a more complex nuclear weapon, it would have to buy technology abroad, he added.
A Russian nuclear expert and a Ukrainian nuclear expert both confirmed to the Kyiv Independent that Ukraine is capable of producing a nuclear bomb, adding that it would likely take years. The Russian expert was speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, and the Ukrainian expert was not authorized to talk to the press about the issue.
“Ukraine would certainly have the knowhow and resources to become a nuclear weapons state if it made the political decision to do so,” Lavikainen said. “The technology required is not out of reach for many countries, and certainly not for Ukraine since it housed crucial elements of the Soviet nuclear weapons complex when it was still part of the USSR.”
“Ukraine could develop both nuclear warheads and carrier vehicles since it possesses the necessary military industry, uranium deposits, and nuclearenergy sector,” Lavikainen continued.
Nikolai Sokov, a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, was more cautious, saying that creating a nuclear bomb “is not impossible” for Ukraine. But, it “will take years, a lot of money, and most likely external support, at least on the equipment side.”
“Ukraine does not have the industrial capacity to manufacture and maintain a nuclear arsenal; it does not have fissile materials, enrichment capacity, plutonium production, most of the elements that go into a nuclear weapon capability,” he added.
Liviu Horovitz, a nuclear deterrence specialist at theGerman Institute for International and Security Affairs, also said that Ukraine faces challenges if it decides to create a nuclear bomb.
“Ukraine surely has the scientific prerequisites for a nuclear weapons program,” but “acquiring the necessary fissile materials is neither cheap nor fast nor very easy to do in secret,” he added.
The nuclear weapons expert who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the most primitive nuclear bomb program focused on uranium centrifuges could cost around $100 million. A plutonium bomb program would cost around $1 billion, he added.
There’s a really easy way for them to get hydrogen bombs, actually: we give them some B61s.
And no, that’s not a joke.
or just let them join nato instead of proliferating?
You think that’s a realistic scenario at this point? That’ll never happen. The US is going to leave NATO.
Good detail in that article. With regard to plutonium, Sweden had a plutonium breeding reactor disguised as a civilian power plant called Ågestaverket. I think that Ukraine would be able to use an existing reactor for this, or retrofit it. But yeah, any Ukrainian nuclear program would obviously become a huge target by the Russian military, and potentially other nuclear states. Ideally these installations would be underground like Ågestaverket was. Even more ideal would be military guarantees from NATO.
I don’t know anything about the laws limiting transfer of fissile material and may violate issues with NATO membership. I’m not seeing the upside for Sweden to do any of this.
And from a quick search makes it sound like decommissioning of Ågestaverket began in 2020 and should be done in 2025. So the plant would need to be, essentially, rebuilt.
Next, the nuclear program was shut down in 1961 because they didn’t have any Pu-240 to refine into Pu-247. Finally, when the program did exist, they had to get their heavy water from Norway. Heavy water allows them to use yellow cake directly for fissile material, but they still use light water but need an enrichment program. So, technically it’s a long way still.
It’s not confirmed publicly, but Sweden likely ended their nuclear weapons program in the 60s or 70s after pressure from the US. They finally decommissioned Ågestaverket in 2020, though they kept the facility open until then, presumably as a fallback option. Sweden has uranium deposits, so it would have been possible to build nuclear weapons during the Cold War if needed.
Now with NATO membership, they have instead imported American nuclear weapons to keep on Swedish soil. Not sure what will happen with their Swedish-American SOFA with Trump, it’s possible that Sweden will fall back on British and French nukes.
But yeah, I mentioned Ågestaverket, since its an example of a civilian reactor that was used for nuclear weapons, something that Ukraine could potentially do as well if the decision came to proliferate.
CANDU-like or RBMK-like design could work for this purpose, but i have doubts about VVERs that they have
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Steal it from the Libyans
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Build Delorean
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???
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Profit?Win War?
It’s all about that flux capacitor.
Go back in time and stop them from selling their original nuclear arsenal
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I thought politics was banned
US politics is temporarily not allowed as a topic. This question appears to be about Ukrainian nuclear defense capabilities, which would not qualify as US politics.
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Take the L bud
Oh, you were taking this seriously?
I’m just fuckin’ with you, dude.
claps great recovery!
Even if they have the ability to build one, and do so without Russia turning the facility where they’re building it into rubble with hypersonic missiles, they would need dozens to have full MAD type protection.
Does Ukraine even have a missile system capable of carrying that kind of payload as far as Moscow?
Maybe not anymore, but they had a few orbital rockets:
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenit_(rocket_family)
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnepr_(rocket)
They definitely had the talent to do so, but realistically they couldn’t build one today :(
Do it. Promises from super powers are worthless. Only power itself matters. And all the other countries are aware of it too now.
Yeah, countries will prioritize self preservation and will gladly let even their allies get destroyed to survive. Can’t trust anyone but themselves. Everyone else is just posturing when it is convenient for them.
Yes. Yes. Yes. DO IT NOW! Buy the equipment and technology from whoever they can. Even if they do it illegally. Countries that do not have nukes are subjects to those that do.
Buy the technology? They built the nukes of the past. Pretty sure they can just dust off some old plans.
Fuck yeah, and I hope they’ve been doing it in secret for a while now.
Idk how easy it easy to just build a nuke… I feel like the long range missile is the hard part, right? The actual nuclear part isn’t quite so complex. Maybe I’m wrong.
They have a lot of the Soviet weapons design bureaus. Not sure how many of the original designers are still around. The tricky bit will be refining enough uranium or plutonium in a war zone.
He said they could make a bomb in a couple weeks if needed. No specifics on delivery or quality.
Edit: sounds like kyiv is denying the claim made by some insider. So guess this isn’t likely true.
Only Usamericans can think that nuclear weapons are a serious option to use.
MAD doctrine. And it works it seems.
He’s giving better nukes to NK in exchange for support, and there’s Intel he’s giving some to Iran as well.
He won’t stop until he is stopped, we should have learned that by now.
I was talking about the act of using it.
You must learn to distinguish between a threat and an act.
Then let’s threaten to nuke moscow tomorrow if he doesn’t immediately withdraw.
We’ll make it a really intense threat too, take all our missiles to defcon 1, deploy all our forces, have squadrons of f-22s and f-35s surrounding Ukraine and obviously tail all their borei.
“It’s just a threat, bro!”
Well, yes, every chess player and every really powerful man knows that the threat is stronger than the act.
Unfortunately, yours cannot be taken seriously.
Because?
This is the whole russian ethos, you must give them everything they want, because they don’t care.
It’s like the idiot who threatens to eat his own shit, and then does it.
We get that they have less respect for themselves and peace, but we learned a long time ago that giving in to those people doesn’t win peace, only more war, because you’re rewarding their behavior.
It is an absolutely credible threat that we could wipe out the entire Russian armed forces with a fraction of our power, and they know that.
You honestly think they pushed so hard to get Trump in power for no reason? We are the only thing holding them back.
Russia and North Korea.
Depends what you mean by “use”.
The Americans are the only ones to have used them in terms of destroying enemy assets (and sadly in that case it was used against civilians). But as a deterrent it’s been used by a LOT of countries all around the world and is still being used for that purpose right now.
An argument could be made the Cold War could have been an all out world war if it weren’t for nukes, with the short peace after WW2 be considered just a break and not the end.
I hope nukes won’t be used, but Ukraine is in trouble and if they are backed into a corner and facing destruction who knows what they will do. Same could apply to Iran before long, if they have the ability to get nukes somehow, it might be their only hope. Just please let it be as a deterrent and not actual nuclear war.
Ukraine is fighting two nuclear armed states… But nahh bro, Ukraine doesn’t need nukes 🤡
If they build it, they have to be ready to use it. And they’d have to use it pretty close to home. Against an adversary with equal capabilities.
Either it would have no effect at all on the conflict, or it would result in annihilation. Doesn’t really seem worth it.
Though maybe to play devils advocate, creating a DMZ wasteland with tactical nukes might not be the worst outcome. Pretty terrible thought though.
Check out M A.D doctrine.
Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
The problem is that when the other side is a madman who would rather end civilization than lose an ounce of power, you’re fucked.
Except that he wouldn’t. He is more afraid of losing his life than anything else, dictator personality goes with it.
The irony is that Ukraine had “the bomb”, but the US and its allies promised to protect them if they gave it up. Oops.
Since I see this claim constantly: where in the Budapest memorandum did they promise protection?
Looking at the Wikipedia summary nowhere does anyone give security assurances similar to NATO article 5 or the even stronger worded mutual defense clause article 42 TEU of the EU. The closest it comes to is in the fourth point, but that is only in the case of nuclear weapons being used. Which obviously hasn’t happened yet. Beyond that it is just a promise not to attack, which Russia has broken, but every other singator has kept. And as far as I can see it does not contain anything that compells others to act on someone else’s breach.
That’s the lesson here… They gave up their nuclear weapons for nothing.
Zero benefit to the people
No protection, just non-agression. That was violated by russia.
And that was the issue of the memorandum - it should’ve included something akin to Article 5
Russia would have never signed on to that. Their whole argument about Ukraine is the constant advancement of NATO territories towards its border.
Yeah… and Ukraine clearly shouldn’t have signed without it
The issue is that as someone already mentioned i doubt something like that was ever truly on the table.
I think you can’t give assurances like that in a vacuum. If a nation e.g. the US would grant them, they’d only do so while simultaniously building up a physical presence in the territory and possibly also do deeper integrations military wise. You wouldn’t give such strong assurances while weakening your own ability to act on them.
For Russia that would have never been acceptable.
That’s my understanding. Furthermore, they had the nuclear weapons of the soviet union. Even if they could maintain them at the time, without much of the infrastructure that the soviet Union had, I think legally they were Moscow’s. Moscow held the metaphorical button, if not the physical one. Similar to US nuclear weapons in Germany aren’t controlled by Berlin.
That being said, I think this whole war has lead to a situation where nuclear armament is very appealing, not just to Kyiv but to many of the similar states looking on. It is again, for world peace we need less nukes in the world, for Ukraine’s sovereign safety, they need (more) nukes.
"A resolution passed by the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, on Nov. 18, 1993, attached conditions to its ratification of START that Russia and the United States deemed unacceptable. Those stated that Ukraine would only dismantle 36 percent of its delivery vehicles and 42 percent of its warheads; all others would remain under Ukrainian custody. Moreover, the resolution made those reductions contingent upon assurances from Russia and the United States to never use nuclear weapons against Ukraine (referred to as “security assurances”), along with foreign aid to pay for dismantlement.
In response, the Clinton and Yeltsin administrations intensified negotiations with Kyiv, eventually producing the Trilateral Statement, which was signed on Jan. 14, 1994. This agreement placated Ukrainian concerns by allowing Ukraine to cooperate in the transfer of the weapons to Russia, which would take place over a maximum period of seven years. The agreement further called for the transferred warheads to be dismantled and the highly enriched uranium they contained to be downblended into low-enriched uranium. Some of that material would then be transferred back to Ukraine for use as nuclear reactor fuel. Meanwhile, the United States would give Ukraine economic and technical aid to cover its dismantlement costs. Finally, the United States and Russia responded to Ukraine’s security concerns by agreeing to provide security assurances upon its NPT accession.
In turn, the Rada ratified START, implicitly endorsing the Trilateral Statement. However, it did not submit its instrument of accession to the NPT until Dec. 5, 1994, when Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States provided security assurances to Ukraine. That decision by the Rada met the final condition for Russia’s ratification of START and therefore subsequently brought that treaty into force.
For more information, see Ukraine, Nuclear Weapons and Security Assurances at a Glance."
https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/lisbon-protocol-glance
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Thanks for adding another source with some more context
From what I understand, it primarily stems from that first stipulation, specifically from points 1 and 4 of the Helsinki Accords
(1) Sovereign equality, respect for the rights inherent in sovereignty (4) Territorial integrity of states
That said, it was very clearly done in a way that didn’t actually guarantee that protection, and assuming that the Ukrainians thought otherwise is frankly an insult to their intelligence.
This is like saying that Germany has the right to keep the American nukes stationed on its soil if the US was to ever leaver Germany.
The soviet bombs were built, operated and guarded by a Russian department of the Russian Republic member of the Soviet union. what Ukraine signed on was a smooth repatriation of those nukes back to Russian. there is no real way Ukraine could have confiscated them even if they tried.
The US and Russia. Ya know, the Russia that’s murdering, raping, and torturing Ukrainians and claiming they shouldn’t exist like genocide
It was even the same fucker personally, who signed it and then rationalized the war, lavrov.
Russia’s side of Ukraine owning them was broken
???
“In 1994, Ukraine agreed to transfer these weapons to Russia and became a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, in exchange for assurances from Russia, the United States and United Kingdom to respect the Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in the existing borders.”
