By now the nukes would have been useless. You need to have a continuous ballistic and nuclear program to manufacture new nukes and missiles as the old ones become stale.
I think Ukraine would have no problem maintaining it's own nuclear program from purely technical perspective, considering they have a number of nuclear plants and expertise. Plutonium is a byproduct of a nuclear plant, they wouldn't even have to bother with uranium enrichment.
What an awful take devoid of context. Russia literally defaulted in 1998, and 'somehow' kept the nukes.
And today Ukraine is doing quite amazing, considering 12 years of war. I can only dream what it would be if russians didn't steal a generation. Giving up nukes was a giant mistake.
Back then, giving up on nukes never was about compromising security. In 1993, I remember being full of hope and opportunity to live in peaceful world with less nukes. It felt like we had our backs by France, UK and USA.
That was a move full of betrayed optimism, not desperation - giving up third world arsenal because the future is bright.
You also need to maintain vectors, at least functioning ICBMs, which cost quite dearly. And Russia had much more ressources than Ukraine at the time, by the way.
Ukraine didn't declare bankruptcy because Russia chose to assume 100% of the USSR external debt. Meanwhile, in 1998, Russia had a GDP PPP 80% higher than Ukraine.
It was a non-proliferation issue, I believe? The same could have been said about the pressure for Ukrainians to renounce the nukes. I agree that in retrospect Ukraine would have been safer with nuclear weapons.
However, a lot could have happened in two decades, and Ukraine had to go through many issues typical of post-Soviet countries at the time. The risk associated with warheads being sold by generals or oligarchs was seen as a real one, see for instance:
