In December 2014 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russia’s Interfax news agency that because Crimea had been absorbed into Russia and was no longer part of Ukraine, Russia “has the right to manage its nuclear arsenal…in accordance with its interests and international legal obligations.”
Even the threat of an introduction by Russia of nuclear weapons into Crimea can be interpreted as a warning to European states that Russia is willing to escalate its effort to control the ‘near-abroad.’ Introducing the weapons also would cement Crimea’s status as “Russian territory.”
Lavrov’s remarks also are further confirmation that Russia has no intention of respecting the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. At that time, Russia, the United States, United Kingdom and Ukraine agreed Ukraine would become a nonnuclear weapons state under the Nonproliferation Treaty by giving up its nuclear weapons—at the time it had the world’s third largest stockpile with 1900 strategic warheads and 2500 tactical nuclear warheads—in exchange for recognition by all signatories that they would respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
