Richard Grenell, Trump’s presidential envoy for special missions, wrote on X that the nuclear weapons Ukraine relinquished to Russia under the Budapest Memorandum were originally Russian.
“They weren’t Ukraine’s. This is an uncomfortable fact,” Grenell claimed.
His remarks drew a sharp rebuttal from Steven Pifer, who served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000 and helped negotiate the Budapest Memorandum.
“Grenell is flat wrong,” the former ambassador wrote. “Nuclear warheads in Ukraine were ex-Soviet, not Russian. Warheads in storage were in sole Ukrainian custody.”
The Budapest Memorandum was signed in December 1994 by Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The agreement guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for giving up its nuclear arsenal.
