Fact Sheet on WMD Threat Reduction Efforts with Ukraine, Russia and Other Former Soviet Union Countries > U.S. Department of Defense > Release & More News Here

The History and Accomplishments of U.S. Collaboration With the International Community to Reduce Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Threats in Ukraine, Russia, and Other Countries of the Former Soviet Union

• Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States, alongside with allies, companions, and worldwide organizations, has led cooperative efforts to scale back legacy threats from nuclear, chemical, and organic weapons left within the Soviet Union’s successor states, together with Russia.  These cooperative menace discount efforts have helped advance world peace and safety, and have supported the worldwide consensus that the world is safer after we work collectively to extend transparency and cut back the dangers from weapons of mass destruction (WMD) packages.  
• The U.S. Congress created the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program by way of the passage of the Soviet Threat Reduction Act of 1991. The CTR Program supplied U.S. funding and experience to: 1) consolidate and safe WMD and WMD-related materials in a restricted quantity of safe websites; 2) stock and account for these weapons and supplies; 3) present secure dealing with and secure disposition of these weapons and supplies as referred to as for by arms management agreements; and 4) supply help to find gainful employment for hundreds of former Soviet scientists with professional information of WMD, WMD-related supplies, or their supply programs
• The United States has supplied this help with transparency and in cooperation with our companions, which included Russia previous to 2014, towards mutually-decided goals, and has been reported on a daily foundation.    
• In addition to the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction work, the Departments of Energy and State have supported nuclear, chemical, and organic menace discount efforts, usually with technical help from different U.S. departments and businesses. This work has occurred in collaboration with different international locations, equivalent to Canada, the European Union, Japan, Norway, the Republic of Korea, and others; multilateral organizations, and the International Science and Technology Center (ISTC); and the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU).  
• Thirty years later, amidst its conflict of aggression towards Ukraine, Russia seeks, with help from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), to undermine that work by spreading disinformation and sowing distrust within the folks and establishments everywhere in the world that contribute to WMD menace discount.  
• This Fact Sheet gives an outline of the historical past of menace discount and nonproliferation packages supported by the United States, in cooperation with international locations of the previous Soviet Union, together with the Governments of Russia and Ukraine.  

Achievements of this cooperation throughout the previous Soviet Union embrace: 

• Destroying 2,531 missiles, decommissioning greater than 1,300 WMD supply programs (silos, cell launchers, submarines, and strategic bombers), upgrading safety at 24 nuclear weapon storage websites, and securely shifting over 600 shipments of nuclear warheads from much less safe storage to safer storage or destruction (virtually all of this work in Russia).
• Ukraine’s voluntary and verifiable renunciation of nuclear weapons, with the switch of Soviet missiles, nuclear weapons, and weapons-usable nuclear supplies to Russia or destruction of such missiles, weapons, and supplies, and accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation (NPT) as a non-nuclear-weapon State Party in December 1994. 
• Joint efforts by the United States and companions working with Russia to destroy Russia’s declared chemical weapons stockpile underneath worldwide verification by the Technical Secretariat of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and guaranteeing that Soviet scientists with weapons-related information may have sustainable civilian employment—specifically, supporting scientists to take away incentives to hunt or settle for of terrorist or different state actor employment and financing.  
• Engagement of hundreds of former Russian organic weapons scientists to conduct peaceable organic analysis initiatives for public well being functions, with the Russian authorities’s full approval.  (These varieties of initiatives had been similar to organic analysis initiatives Russia is now criticizing in different former Soviet international locations.)
• Securing Russia’s energetic approval of and collaboration, as a full member of the ISTC Governing Board till 2014, in peaceable organic analysis initiatives value tens of millions of {dollars} to advance public well being with Georgia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and different former Soviet Union international locations.  (The Russian authorities repeatedly accepted, and usually collaborated in, the very initiatives it’s now criticizing.)

Ukraine

• Ukraine has no nuclear, chemical, or organic weapons packages.  On March 11 and 18, 2022, United Nations (UN) High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu equally acknowledged that the UN is just not conscious of any organic weapons packages in Ukraine. Those feedback had been reiterated on May 13, 2022, by the UN Deputy High Representative for Disarmament Affairs. 
• Today, the collaborations in Ukraine stay peaceable efforts to enhance nuclear and radiological security and safety, illness surveillance, chemical security and safety, and readiness to answer epidemics and pandemics equivalent to COVID-19.  
• Many of these collaborations are multilateral and contain the G7-led Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Health Organization (WHO), the OPCW, and different UN specialised businesses.  
• Ukraine has change into a frontrunner in transparency and in selling nonproliferation and world well being safety norms.  For instance, in December 2021, Ukraine accomplished a voluntary, exterior, WHO-led analysis of its capability to forestall, detect, and quickly reply to public well being emergencies.

Ukraine Has No Nuclear Weapons Program

• During the Cold War, the Soviet army stationed a large quantity of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, believed to be round 1,800 nuclear warheads in addition to strategic bombers and nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).  There had been additionally a number of places in Ukraine the place Soviet tactical nuclear weapons had been saved.  After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia retained management of these weapons underneath the aegis of the Commonwealth of Independent States.  
• Ukraine assumed obligations underneath the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) in 1992 as a successor state to the Soviet Union, and in 1994 joined the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear-weapon State Party, renouncing the Soviet legacy nuclear weapons that had been deployed or saved in Ukraine. 
• The switch of all nuclear weapons from Ukraine to the Russian Federation was accomplished by 1996, in return for reactor gasoline for peaceable makes use of and safety assurances from Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom as set forth within the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.  All ICBMs had been dismantled or faraway from Ukraine, and all nuclear missile silos in Ukraine had been destroyed.
• As a Non-Nuclear Weapon State Party to the NPT, Ukraine has upheld its obligation to not manufacture or in any other case purchase nuclear weapons or to hunt or obtain help of their manufacture.  Ukraine additionally has met its NPT obligation to simply accept IAEA safeguards on all nuclear materials within the nation, and as well as has in pressure an Additional Protocol to its NPT-required safeguards settlement to allow the IAEA to offer credible assurances to the worldwide group that every one nuclear materials in Ukraine stays in peaceable actions. The IAEA has repeatedly acknowledged that it has discovered no indication that may give rise to a proliferation concern in Ukraine. 
• In an extra demonstration of Ukraine’s dedication to nuclear nonproliferation, on the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit hosted by the United States, Ukraine voluntarily pledged to take away its extremely enriched uranium (HEU).  
  • Through the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) efforts, 234 kg of Ukraine’s HEU was repatriated to Russia, the unique exporter of this materials.  The materials was then down-blended to low enriched uranium (LEU).  In alternate for eliminating this HEU stock, NNSA supplied LEU gasoline for the analysis reactor on the Kyiv Institute for Nuclear Research and supported the event and building of the Neutron Source Facility on the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, with each services getting used for peaceable functions.  
  • The very small amount of HEU that is still in Ukraine is meant for particular scientific functions, equivalent to nuclear forensics, and is effectively beneath the quantity wanted to supply a nuclear system.  Ukraine doesn’t possess uranium enrichment or spent gasoline reprocessing capabilities, nor does it possess substantial portions of separated plutonium.

• Ukraine has constantly acknowledged that it has no intention of buying nuclear weapons and has constantly supported different key parts of worldwide nonproliferation regimes, such because the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Zangger Committee, the Wassenaar Arrangement, the Australia Group, and the Missile Technology Control Regime.  Further, Ukraine has signed and ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. 

Ukraine Has No Biological Weapons Program

• At the time of its dissolution in 1991, the Soviet Union, regardless of being a State Party to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), had a big and subtle organic weapons program, consisting of dozens of analysis, improvement, and manufacturing services, with tens of hundreds of workers, unfold throughout many of its successor states.  
• In violation of the BWC, this Soviet weapons complicated developed a broad vary of organic pathogens to be used as weapons towards vegetation, animals, and people, together with the weaponization of anthrax, plague, and smallpox.  
• In distinction, no different European state nor the United States possessed any organic weapon improvement packages, in compliance with their obligations underneath the BWC.  When the Soviet Union dissolved, it left some newly impartial states, like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, with legacy organic weapons program services, gear, and supplies that had been weak to theft, misuse, and unsafe dealing with and storage. The U.S. Departments of Defense and State funded packages to assist transition such former Soviet weapons services into peaceable public well being services.  
• The United States, by way of worldwide collaboration, has additionally labored to deal with different organic threats all through the previous Soviet Union. Subject matter consultants in biology, biodefense, public well being, and associated fields had been engaged from throughout the U.S. authorities. These efforts superior illness surveillance and enhanced peaceable organic analysis cooperation between former Soviet Union scientists and the worldwide scientific group, constant with worldwide norms for security, safety, nonproliferation, and transparency. 
• The United States has additionally labored collaboratively to enhance Ukraine’s organic security, safety, and illness surveillance for each human and animal well being, offering help to 46 peaceable Ukrainian laboratories, well being services, and illness diagnostic websites over the past twenty years.  The collaborative packages have targeted on enhancing public well being and agricultural security measures on the nexus of nonproliferation. 
• This work, usually performed in partnership with exterior organizations, such because the WHO and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), has resulted in safer and simpler illness surveillance and detection. Ukrainian scientists have acted constant with worldwide finest practices and norms in publishing analysis outcomes, partnering with worldwide colleagues and multilateral organizations, and broadly distributing their analysis and public well being findings.
• Ukraine owns and operates its public well being laboratories and related infrastructure, and the United States is proud to collaborate, cooperate, and present help in help of this infrastructure.  These services function similar to different state or native public well being and analysis laboratories world wide.  Furthermore, all gear and coaching supplied by the United States is topic to U.S. export management processes, audits, and acquisition legal guidelines and rules, which ensures transparency and compliance with home and worldwide legal guidelines. 
• This help has immediately and measurably improved Ukraine’s preparedness and response efforts to detect and report outbreaks, together with COVID-19 response, and has helped shield its meals provide along with many different advantages that accrued from this partnership.  

Ukraine Has No Chemical Weapons Program

• Ukraine has been a revered member of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) since ratifying the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in 1998.  
• Ukraine has constantly demonstrated its dedication to uphold the worldwide norm towards the use of chemical weapons, together with by way of its participation on the OPCW and its implementation of its obligations underneath the CWC.  
• Ukraine commonly performs an energetic position on the OPCW Conference of the States Parties and was most just lately a member of the OPCW Executive Council from 2018 to 2020.  Ukraine beforehand held a quantity of management roles on the OPCW, to incorporate chairing the Executive Council from 2012 to 2014.  
• The United States has been clear since ratifying the CWC in 1997 that it’ll by no means underneath any circumstances develop, produce, in any other case purchase, stockpile or retain chemical weapons, or switch, direct or not directly, chemical weapons to anybody; use chemical weapons; interact in any army preparations to make use of chemical weapons; or help encourage or induce, in any manner, anybody to have interaction in any exercise prohibited to a state social gathering underneath the CWC.  
• The United States is dedicated to the destruction of all chemical weapons world wide and has supplied substantial help and help to quite a few international locations within the destruction of their chemical weapons, together with Russia and Syria.

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