The Biden administration has ruled out returning the nuclear weapons Ukraine gave up after the Soviet Union's collapse, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed on ABC This Week on Sunday.
In an interview with Johnathan Karl, Sullivan dismissed a November 21 report from The New York Times, which quoted unnamed Washington officials proposing the arming of Ukraine with nuclear devices to deter further Russian aggression.
“That is not under consideration. No. What we are doing is surging various conventional capacities to Ukraine so that they can effectively defend themselves and take the fight to the Russians, not nuclear capability,” the presidential advisor emphasized.
Last week, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova labeled the idea an act of “absolute insanity” capable of bringing the world to “the brink of catastrophe.”
Ukraine's nuclear arsenal was supplied by the communist government in Moscow before the former Soviet republic, along with Belarus and Kazakhstan, agreed to give them up under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
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