Russia and Ukraine: The nuclear questions

Russia has justifies its invasion of Ukraine on grounds of the alleged nuclear threat from its smaller neighbour to the West. However, under an international agreement, and supervised by Russia and the United States, Ukraine had de-nuclearised completely between 1996 and 2001. With the Russian army now sitting in its territory, Ukrainians are wondering if that was a mistake.

Russia’s foreign minister justified the invasion as means to prevent the emergence of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Ukraine gave up its nuclear arms in the years after its independence. What is the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START)? And the 1994 Budapest treaty? From 2014 to now Putin has put Russia’s nuclear forces on ‘special alert’.