Former President Bill Clinton has expressed remorse over his role in negotiating the 1994 deal that saw Ukraine give up its nuclear arsenal, suggesting that Russia would never invade its smaller neighbor if it still had nuclear weapons.
“I feel a private stake because I actually have them [Ukraine] comply with relinquish nuclear weapons. And none of them imagine that Russia would have done this feat if Ukraine still had weapons,” Clinton said he told Irish broadcaster RTÉ in an interview aired on Tuesday.
The forty second president referred to the groundbreaking post-Cold War agreement during which the then Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk agreed to hand over about 1,900 nuclear warheads in exchange for security guarantees from the USA and Great Britain and Russia’s commitment to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
![Bill Clinton signed an agreement between Russia and Ukraine.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009270844.jpg?w=1024)
The pact, generally known as the Budapest Memorandum, was broken in 2014 when Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea.
In February 2022, Putin once more flouted the agreement by invading Ukraine, calling it a “special military operation”.
“I knew that President Putin didn’t support the agreement [then-Russian] President [Boris] Yeltsin never interfered with Ukraine’s territorial boundaries – he made the deal because he wanted Ukraine to offer up nuclear weapons,” Clinton said.
![Bill Clinton](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009270828.jpg?w=672)
“They were afraid to offer them up because they thought it was the one thing that would protect them from expansive Russia,” he added.
The previous president remarked that he felt “terrible” that the deal had been broken and that Ukraine had little to supply as a deterrent to Putin’s invaders.
“When it became convenient for him, President Putin broke up and first occupied Crimea. I feel terrible about that because Ukraine is a vital country,” Clinton said.
![Bill Clinton](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/NYPICHPDPICT000009270832.jpg?w=1024)
Clinton argued that Western military and financial support for Ukraine should proceed, and that Kiev should determine when the time was right for a peace deal.
“I feel what Putin did was very incorrect, and I feel that Europe and the US should proceed to support Ukraine,” he said. “There may come a time when the Ukrainian government believes it may possibly consider a peace deal they’ll live with, but I feel the remaining of us shouldn’t limit them.”