[polotics]

You don't seem to understand the Ukrainian perspective here.

So pretty straight from one Captain I know: in 1991 the Budapest agreement had Ukraine relinquish its nukes in exchange for security guarantees from both Russia and the US, amongst others. Clearly these guarantees were lies so let's grab some plutonium from the plants we got, and make imprecisely-yielding trucks to save our motherland. This is the escalation we want to avoid, chipmunk Putin and his mafia have a lot more to lose with their decades of graft, I fear cornered Uk generals with enough bullet-in-the-head short-term POW sons and Bucha-burn-after-use daughters to their name may have much less to hesitate for.

[aguaviva]

In 1991 the Budapest agreement had Ukraine relinquish its nukes in exchange for security guarantees from both Russia and the US, amongst others.

Actually the Budapest Memorandum (from 1994, not 1991) explicitly avoided any mention of security guarantees as such, which has been seen as one of its major shortcomings.

It asked that the signatories respect each others' borders, which was in itself significant. But this by itself does not amount to any kind of security guarantee.