Bill Clinton Regrets Getting Ukraine ‘To Give Up Their Nuclear Weapons’: ‘I Feel Terrible’

Former US President Bill Clinton expressed regret for Ukraine giving up nuclear warheads as a result of a decades-old agreement between Kyiv, the US, and Russia. In an interview with RTE Prime Time, Clinton said that had it not been for a 1994 agreement initiated by his administration to get nuclear weapons out of Ukraine, Russia likely would not have invaded the country last February. Clinton admitted that he feels “terrible” about the agreement that seemingly paved the way to a bloody war that has no end in sight. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Clinton signed an agreement with Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk in 1994, which removed the Soviet’s nuclear arsenal that remained in Ukraine.

In a related agreement later that year, known as the Budapest Memorandum, the US, along with the UK and Russia, promised to respect Ukrainian territory after it agreed to hand over its nukes to Russia. That promise was broken when Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 under the watch of the Obama administration.

Clinton also said that Ukraine was “afraid” to give up its nuclear weapons, believing they were “the only thing that protected them from an expansionist Russia,” a fear that now appears even more credible. Clinton told RTE that he “knew that President Putin did not support the agreement President Yeltsin made never to interfere with Ukraine’s territorial boundaries — an agreement he made because he wanted Ukraine to give up their nuclear weapons.”

The former president said that he believes the US should continue to aid Ukraine in its fight against Russia until a peace agreement that’s favorable to the Ukrainians can be reached. Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine one year ago, and it is estimated that more than 16,000 Ukrainian civilians have died as a result of the conflict, while the US estimated that civilian deaths could be up to 40,000. The US also estimates that each side has suffered around 100,000 military casualties.