Putin says Russia won’t let Ukraine obtain nuclear weapons

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday Russia would not let Ukraine get nuclear weapons, after Ukraine’s leader said that since Kyiv had given up its Soviet-era nuclear arms, it must join Nato.

Putin said any move by Ukraine to get nuclear weapons could not be concealed and would draw an appropriate Russian response. “Russia will not allow this to happen, no matter what,” he told reporters.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday he had told US presidential candidate Donald Trump that Ukraine needed either nuclear weapons or Nato membership for its security - but as it gave up nuclear weapons after the break-up of the Soviet Union, joining Nato was the only way it could deter Russia.

Zelensky later clarified that he had never said Ukraine was preparing to build a nuclear weapon. “We don’t do nuclear weapons. Please, don’t move these messages,” he said.

Ukraine inherited nuclear weapons after the breakup of the Soviet Union but voluntarily relinquished them in the 1990s in return for guarantees of its territorial integrity, a deal it says Moscow reneged on by invading its land.

Ukraine inherited the world´s third-largest nuclear arsenal when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991. It surrendered it three years later after receiving security guarantees from Russia and the United States.

Those security guarantees, known as the Budapest Memorandum, required that the signatories respect Ukraine and the other ex-Soviet republics´ territorial integrity and independence.