[tephra]

The problem for Ukraine was that they didn't have that much control over the weapons.

The ability to launch them was only something Moscow could do (they might have been able to reverse engineer control and remove safeguards and the might not). They needed to have tritium replaced every 12 years and IIRC many of the nuclear forced remained loyal to Russia.

That's their bargaining position at the time and that's before we add the international pressure to get rid of them.

[throwaway11460]

Ukrainian engineers built the nukes. They wouldn't need to do that much reverse engineering.

[justsomehnguy]

By your logic Soviet space program was made by Kazakhs.

[throwaway11460]

Not sure what logic you're imagining. No, it's not based on location of the weapons - it's based on the fact that the top nuclear research institutions of the Soviet Union were in Ukraine.

The space program had a lot of Ukrainians too.

[justsomehnguy]

There is a big leap between "Ukrainian engineers built the nukes" and "some engineers in the Soviet nuclear program were of the Ukrainian ethnicity".

[throwaway11460]

I said Ukrainian engineers built the nukes because that's what happened. Of course they did it as part of the Soviet Union - and yeah, some of the engineers were of the Russian ethnicity too.

[hackerlight]

They would have been a nuclear-threshold state at minimum.