It’s either join NATO or build nuclear weapons, President Volodymyr Zelensky told Donald Trump.

This is the first time after the full-scale invasion of 2022 that Zelensky has directly referred to Ukraine’s possible return to a nuclear state.

Speaking before the European Council in Brussels on Thursday, Zelensky said he told the Republican US presidential candidate that Ukraine’s response to the Russian invasion would be either to restore its nuclear capability or to join NATO, and Ukraine opted for the latter solution.

It is unclear when exactly the conversation between Zelensky and Trump took place.

Zelensky also discussed the Budapest Memorandum in his speech, a 1990s security deal that called for kyiv to abandon its nuclear arsenal after the dissolution of the USSR in exchange for security guarantees from the United States, the Kingdom -United and Russia, which were never liberated during the invasion of Moscow.

“Which nuclear states have suffered? None except Ukraine… Who gave up their nuclear weapons? All ? No. Only Ukraine… Who is fighting today? Ukraine,” Zelensky told the European Council.

He then discussed his alleged conversation with Trump.

“As such – and I said this in a conversation with Donald Trump – this is our situation,” Zelensky added.

“What exit do we have? Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, which will be a defense for us, or we will need some kind of alliance, in addition to NATO. But today we know of no other alliance. Today, NATO countries are not at war. NATO countries are not fighting. In NATO countries, people are still alive. Thank God. This is why we choose NATO and not nuclear weapons.

Other topics of interest

Putin’s new terrorist coalition is just getting started

Russia, along with Iran, North Korea and other rogue actors, describes itself as already “at war” with America and Europe.

“And Donald Trump heard me. He said you have a fair argument,” Zelensky said.

Until December 5, 1994, Ukraine was officially the third nuclear power in the world.

Due to Ukraine’s strategic location during the Cold War, it inherited a formidable stockpile of nuclear weapons upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union, alongside Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Its nuclear arsenal included nearly 1,700 strategic nuclear warheads, as well as a fleet of bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that rivaled most other nuclear-capable countries at the time.

However, it is worth noting that while Ukraine physically possessed the weapons and expertise to develop and maintain them – although lack of resources would likely have prevented it – Moscow retained control of these weapons.

While one think tank reported that Ukraine has “no uranium enrichment plants or fuel production facilities for nuclear power plants”, where “Ukrainian uranium concentrate has been shipped to Russia for enrichment and fuel fabrication” before the 2022 invasion, it is possible that the country retained the knowledge base needed to restart its nuclear programs if it so desired.