Inheriting the Bomb: A History of Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament and Why It Matters

 

In 1991, as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine inherited the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal. By 1994, it decided to surrender Soviet nuclear inheritance and joint the international nuclear nonproliferation regime. In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed part of its territory, in violation of security commitments pledged to Ukraine as part of the disarmament deal. In 2022, Russia unleashed a full-scale war against Ukraine that continues to this day. In view of these developments, Ukraine’s decision to disarm is more relevant and more controversial. Inheriting the Bomb is an investigation of the dynamics of Soviet disintegration, the contestation over the fate of its nuclear inheritance, Ukraine’s deliberation of its nuclear options and its decision to forgo nuclear weapons. It also sheds light on the consequences of Russia’s war against Ukraine for the global nuclear order.   

 

 

Mariana Budjeryn is a Senior Research Associate at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center, Project on Managing the Atom (MTA). She is the author of Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023) and a winner of the 2024 William E. Colby Military Writers’ Award, the first female in the award’s 25-year history. Formerly, she held appointments of a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at MTA, and a visiting professor at Tufts University and Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. Mariana is a member of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academies of Sciences and a senior non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution. Her research and analytical contributions appeared in the Journal of Cold War Studies, Nonproliferation Review, Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, War on the Rocks, and in the publications of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars where she is a Global Europe Fellow.