Former President Bill Clinton has expressed remorse over his role in negotiating a 1994 deal that resulted in Ukraine giving up its nuclear arsenal, suggesting that Russia never would have invaded its smaller neighbor if it still had nukes.
“I feel a personal stake because I got them [Ukraine] to agree to give up their nuclear weapons. And none of them believe that Russia would have pulled this stunt if Ukraine still had their weapons,” Clinton told Irish broadcaster RTE in an interview that aired Tuesday.
The 42nd president was referencing a landmark post-Cold War deal in which then-Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk agreed to surrender roughly 1,900 nuclear warheads in exchange for security assurances from the US and United Kingdom, as well as a commitment from Russia to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
The pact, known as the Budapest Memorandum, was violated in 2014 when Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea.
In February 2022, Putin once again flouted the agreement when he invaded Ukraine, calling it a “special military operation.”
“I knew that President Putin did not support the agreement [then-Russian] President [Boris] Yeltsin made never to interfere with Ukraine’s territorial boundaries – an agreement he made because he wanted Ukraine to give up their nuclear weapons,” Clinton said.
“They were afraid to give them up because they thought that’s the only thing that protected them from an expansionist Russia,” he added.
The former president remarked that he felt “terrible” that the deal was shattered and that Ukraine had little to offer as a deterrent to Putin’s invading forces.
“When it became convenient to him, President Putin broke it and first took Crimea. And I feel terrible about it because Ukraine is a very important country,” Clinton said.
Clinton argued that Western military and financial support for Ukraine should continue, and Kyiv should be the one to determine when it is the right time to pursue a peace deal.
“I think what Mr. Putin did was very wrong, and I believe Europe and the United States should continue to support Ukraine,” he said. “There may come a time when the Ukrainian government believes that they can think of a peace agreement they could live with, but I don’t think the rest of us should cut and run on them.”