US envoy says Ukraine does not possess nuclear weapons.
The nuclear weapons that Ukraine transferred under the Budapest Memorandum did not originally belong to Kyiv.
According to RIA Novosti on March 26, Richard Grenell, the US President's special envoy for special missions, stated that the nuclear weapons Ukraine transferred to Moscow under the Budapest Memorandum do not belong to Ukraine, but are the property of Russia. On social media platform X, Grenell described this as a "hard truth to hear."
"Let's clarify the situation with the Budapest Memorandum: nuclear weapons belong to Russia and they are relics. Ukraine returned the nuclear weapons to Russia. They do not belong to Ukraine. This is a hard truth to hear," Grenell wrote.
In February, former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba stated that Ukraine missed the opportunity to possess nuclear weapons in 1994, when the Budapest Memorandum was signed, and that if Kyiv now decides to create nuclear weapons, it will lose partners and arms suppliers.
Earlier, in an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the process of Ukraine joining NATO could take years, even decades, and that the West should provide nuclear weapons to Kyiv to ensure its security.
