In Soviet times, the territory of today's Ukraine was stored a deadly arsenal of weapons, including intercontinental ballistic missiles and several thousand nuclear warheads for strategic and tactical missiles. One of these nuclear sites was in Pervomaisk, located about 300 km south of Kiev. "It was thought that this would last forever, but now this place is deathly silent," said retired rocket engineer Valery Kuznetsov, who worked here for decades, according to a report by German public broadcaster ARD.
"I was ready to push the button"
The vast terrain of the former nuclear missile base of the 46th Missile Division has been turned into a museum for over 20 years. In the command center deep underground, a red light is on and Kuznetsov simulates a missile launch. He explains that when he was on combat duty, he was always ready to press the button to launch the missile - if there was a corresponding order from Moscow.
"We were told that when we received the order to launch, the enemy's missiles were already flying towards us. Flight time from America is, for example, 22 to 28 minutes, and from Europe - up to 12 minutes. And today even less, because there are now hypersonic missiles," the former soldier told ARD.
In 1982: "We decided a war was starting"
Kuznetsov could not have known in advance the purpose of the Soviet nuclear strike, even though he held a leadership position at the time. Pushing the button was simply the final moment in a long chain of commands.
Today's pensioner remembers a crisis situation in 1982: at that time, for several minutes, it was not clear whether a nuclear attack would be carried out or not. All the phones were busy and neither the command centers of the strategic missile forces, nor the people of strategic aviation or submarines could be reached. "We all thought a war was starting," Kuznetsov recalled.
"We need NATO membership or nuclear weapons again"
Kuznetsov lost his job on December 5, 1994. On that day, then-Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma signed the Budapest Accords, in which Kiev pledged to hand over all of its nuclear weapons and many of its conventional weapons to Russia. In return, the US, Great Britain and Russia must guarantee Ukraine's security.
However, the memorandum is not worth the paper it is written on, says Kuznetsov, echoing the opinion of many Ukrainians today. For hours he can talk about nuclear or intercontinental ballistic missiles, for example, about "Satan" with a range of 15,000 km. To give up all this was politically naive, the former military man is convinced. "That's why we have to join NATO or take back what we left behind - the nuclear weapons in Ukraine." He is convinced that if Ukraine had at least tactical nuclear weapons, "there would be no war today.
Since the beginning of the invasion, Russia has fired about 14,000 drones and more than 9,000 missiles at the neighboring country. Among them there are also those that were constructed with the help of Ukrainian expertise, Kuznetsov told ARD.
A crime against the Ukrainian people
On the sidelines of the meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels this week, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibikha showed journalists a folder with the document from the Budapest Memorandum. According to him, the memorandum did not guarantee either Ukrainian or transatlantic security and was a mistake, and in this regard he called for more solidarity on the part of the partners. Peace for Ukraine is conceivable only if there is a guarantee that Russia will no longer be able to attack it, that is, if the country is accepted into NATO.
In this context, several models are discussed, but Ukraine insists on a formal invitation within the internationally recognized borders of 1991, i.e. including the territories occupied by Russia.
"The West was once my enemy, and today I want Ukraine to become a member of NATO," says the 70-year-old Kuznetsov. Before ARD, he accuses the then Ukrainian leadership of having committed a crime against the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian state by signing the memorandum in question.
Author: Andrea Beer (ARD)