Tactical Nuclear Weapons

Abstract

Co-operation between Russia and Ukraine over the dismantling of Ukraine’s tactical nuclear weapons was codified in the documents setting up the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the subsequent signing of nuclear weapons agreements in Alma Ata and Minsk.¹ At the meeting in Alma Ata an agreement was signed on joint measures on nuclear weapons by the four states that inherited the Soviet nuclear weaponry: Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Article 5.1 of the agreement on joint measures with respect to nuclear weapons stated that Belarus and Ukraine pledged to accede to the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of nuclear weapons as non-nuclear weapons states. This article also confirmed Ukraine’s desire to move towards a non-nuclear status and that this objective was to be achieved through co-operation with the Russian Federation. It states that the pledge by the four nuclear republics not to transfer nuclear weapons to another state does not ‘prevent the transfer of nuclear weapons… to the territory of the RSFSR for the purpose of their destruction’.² Article 6 of the Agreement sets out a timetable of six months for the removal of Ukraine’s tactical nuclear weapons to central factory depots in Russia for their disassembly under joint control.