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Ukraine Vows to Remain Non-Nuclear
Ukraine reaffirmed yesterday that it would remain a nuclear weapon-free nation, even if it were to join NATO, a move President Victor Yushchenko has said he would like to complete by 2008 (see GSN, Aug. 2, 2002; People’s Daily Online, July 1). “If someone is convinced that after Ukraine joins NATO there will be nuclear weapons on our territory, I want to assure them: there will be no nuclear weapons on our territory,” said Defense Minister Anatoliy Grytsenko (Agence France-Presse/Defense News.com, June 30). After several years of negotiation following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine agreed to transfer to Russia all of the nuclear weapons it had inherited. “We voluntarily renounced the status of the nuclear force,” Grytsenko said. “Why then would we allow the deployment of someone else’s nuclear weapons?” (People’s Daily Online). NATO leader Jaap de Hoop Scheffer traveled to Kiev this week to discuss and promote the alliance’s possible expansion. “I know that many people here in Ukraine still think of the Cold War when they think of NATO,” he said Monday, but the organization “is a different NATO than the NATO of the Cold War. … Today’s NATO is designed to help provide security in a new world.” Domestic opposition to Ukrainian alliance membership is growing, according to public opinion surveys. A May poll indicated that 55.7 percent of Ukrainians opposed the move, up from 48 percent in February (Agence France-Presse).
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