[toast0]

Ukraine gave up nukes that they couldn't afford to maintain and got unenforcable security guarantees 'assurances' in return.

Giving up the nukes allowed Ukraine to attract foreign aid and build an economy for 20 years before invasions began. Who knows what would have happened if they kept nukes and didn't get necessary aid and couldn't build their economy or maintain the weapons.

[jijijijij]

I think the point isn't if it's been a good decision at the time (I don't think it's been much of a decision at all), but rather that Russia wouldn't have invaded Ukraine, if Ukraine was still armed with nuclear weapons. Hindsight is 20/20, but the world took notice.

[toast0]

Are 20 year unmaintained weapons an effective deterent? Would there have been capacity to resist occupation if it wasn't? Would Ukraine have been coerced into some form of union through economic means and would that be better or worse for the people of Ukraine than the invasions?

All sorts of questions to ask. Yes, if our timeline was otherwise unchanged, but the nukes were kept and maintained, it seems unlikely that invasion in 2014 would have happened... But it's a big change to the timeline to keep the weapons, and there's too many unknowns to predict the resulting changes. I do strongly suspect few countries will accept similar assurances in the future, unless under duress, but then Ukraine wasn't exactly free from duress at the time either.

[BuyMyBitcoins]

While Ukraine had Soviet nuclear weapons, it did not have the launch codes, infrastructure, technical knowledge, or the economy needed to convert them into an arsenal under their sovereign control. Moscow still “held the keys” for all of those warheads.

Given how insistent the international community was on making sure those nukes were disposed of, and how economically devastated post Soviet countries were, I don’t think Ukraine stood any chance of having a nuclear deterrent.

[enceladus06]

The international community allowed Pakistan and Israel to get nukes.