In a historic moment, the West cannot look away from Ukraine

In December 1991, the Soviet Union passed into history, leaving nuclear weapons on the territory of many of the former republics. The return to Russia, the designated nuclear weapon successor state, of weapons deployed on the territory of the smaller republics was already underway, but the four larger republics presented a more complicated problem. The deployments in the three former republics designated as nonnuclear weapon successor states—Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine—were sizeable. The weapons left by the Soviet Union on the territory of Ukraine had the effect of making Ukraine the possessor of the third largest nuclear weapon stockpile in the world.