Lavrov: Nobody Would Let Ukraine Go Nuclear Again

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RIA Novosti, PUBLISHED 18.09.2014

Nobody would allow Ukraine to revoke its non-nuclear status, even the West, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.

Commenting on recent statements by the Ukrainian defense minister, who has stated the possibility of the revision of Ukraine's nuclear status in light with the current crisis, Lavrov said Valery Geletey should not indulge in baseless threats.

"I think nobody would allow him to do that, especially the Western countries, which have a decisive influence on the Ukrainian authorities," Lavrov said during his official visit to Ethiopia.

During a press conference on Sunday, Ukraine's defense minister Valery Geletey stated that if "Ukraine cannot defend itself today, if the world will not help us, we will be forced to return to the creation of [nuclear] weapons".

Ukraine's non-nuclear status, sealed in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) cannot be revised, and any talk on the issue is baseless, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.

On December 1994, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances providing security assurances against the threat or use of force against Ukraine's territory or political independence.

Ukraine, which had the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal after the breakup of the Soviet Union, abandoned nuclear weapons and joined the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state.

Topics: East Europe, Ukraine

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