[_ugfj]

This is a popular narrative but really, those nukes were a burden on Ukraine and nothing more -- the forces possessing and maintaining those weapons reported to Russia and any launch needed authorization from the Чегет the Russian head of state held, whoever that was. Sure, they were on Ukrainian land but that was all. That is why Ukraine so easily surrendered all those weapons for extremely weak reassurances. If you were to read the text https://policymemos.hks.harvard.edu/files/policymemos/files/... you would notice how there's no real security guarantee whatsoever. Basically it says if someone nukes or threatens to nuke Ukraine they will "seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine".

Sure, there are words saying "the Russian Federation [...] reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine [...] to respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine" but what if they don't? tough luck. No one promised help, there's no built in penalty mechanism, nothing.

[EasyMark]

I’m sure that over the years they could have reverse engineered the bombs and reused the warheads for more tactical strikes into Russian even if they could maintain the ICBM versions. It’s not like there weren’t a lot of nuke engineers and scientists in Ukraine when they split up the Soviet Empire

[chx]

This brings up a very old memory: the readme of Volkov Commander said the author of it is some nuclear institute in Kyiv. Yup.

(Also, I uploaded Volkov Commander to SIMTEL 31 years ago and the ignorant asshole running that site reported me to the university for pirating Norton Commander and they banned me from the university VAX leading me straight to Linux. Funny how that worked out.)