Ukrainian MP in the unicameral Verkhovna Rada Oleksiy Goncharenko claimed at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 17 that Ukraine needs nuclear weapons to fight Russia. At the conference, Goncharenko, speaking from the audience, posed a question to U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken, saying that unless Ukraine receives full NATO membership, it will have to develop or otherwise obtain an arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The next day, claiming to be dissatisfied with Blinken’s answer, Goncharenko expressed his view on his Telegram channel, “Review this question. Once again I will say directly and openly: I support the return of nuclear weapons to Ukraine. And I believe that this is our only option for survival. If NATO does not want to accept us into the alliance. So—rockets must be made. We don’t need a thousand. We need 20. Will there be sanctions? Let’s endure. There is no other way out.”
In referencing the return of Ukraine’s nuclear weapons, Goncharenko is referring to the fact that in 1991, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, one-third of the Soviet nuclear missile fleet was passed into the hands of Ukraine. In 1994, in Budapest, Ukraine gave up that nuclear fleet in return for Russian, British, and American security guarantees, in what was known as the Budapest Memorandum.
Russian intelligence is well aware that Goncharenko is an asset of Anglo-American intelligence and their “Free Nations of Post Russia Forum” operation to break apart the Russian Federation. Goncharenko works closely with his “good friend” Luke Coffey of the neocon Hudson Institute in that project. EIR was right to warn in May 2023, long before Goncharenko’s brazen call in Munich for a nuclear-armed Ukraine, that if that Anglo-American-Ukrainian network were not shut down, they could provoke a nuclear war.
It should be recalled that in February 2022, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his speech at that year’s Munich Security Conference, threatened to reconsider Kiev’s renunciation of nuclear weapons. At that time, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated, “We are convinced that the international community should take such reckless statements very seriously.”
An attempt to restore Ukraine’s nuclear weapons, through procurement or supply from others, would be suicidal. The U.K.-U.S.-EU axis is in a wild, unbalanced frame of mind, as it faces the loss of its looting financial system, and of power. A move from that configuration to nudge Goncharenko’s proposal further along, with an expected Russian response, would push the world to the verge of a nuclear World War III.
