Bill Clinton Says He Regrets Persuading Ukraine to Give up Nuclear Weapons

Bill Clinton, the former president of the United States, expressed his regret over persuading Ukraine to disarm its nuclear weapons during the 1990s.

He revealed during an interview with the Irish outlet RTE on April 4th that he bears the responsibility for urging Ukraine to get rid of its nuclear stockpile under a tripartite agreement between Kyiv, Washington, and Moscow in 1994, following the end of the Cold War.

Ukraine, which was then the third-largest nuclear power in the world, had agreed to give away their strategic nuclear collection to Russia for destruction.

Clinton believed that Russia wouldn’t have attempted to take over the Donbas region last February if his administration had not been steadfast in forcing Ukraine to remove nuclear weapons.

“I feel a personal stake because I got them [Ukraine] to agree to give up their nuclear weapons. And none of them believe that Russia would have pulled this stunt if Ukraine still had their weapons,” said Clinton.

He expressed sadness that the 1994 compromise he helped create paved the way for a violent confrontation that has claimed hundreds of thousands of casualties on each side.

The West and Russia Convincing Ukraine to Give up Nuclear Deterrent

In January 1994, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Clinton signed a tripartite agreement with Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk. The deal aimed to eliminate the Soviet-era nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory.

Washington was also party to the Budapest Memorandum, a related agreement later that year, along with the UK and Russia. It pledged that all signatories uphold Ukraine’s territorial integrity after it agreed to hand over its nuclear weapons to Russia.

However, that promise was broken when Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and sections of Donbas in 2014 in the midst of a civil war between Kyiv and ethnic Russian separatists in the areas.

“I knew that President [Vladimir] Putin did not support the agreement President Yeltsin made never to interfere with Ukraine’s territorial boundaries—an agreement he made because he wanted Ukraine to give up their nuclear weapons,” said Clinton.

“They were af