FALSE: The U.S. gave Ukraine nuclear weapons but took them back after threats from Russia

Russian Telegram channels are spreading a clip from a supposed interview with former U.S. President Joe Biden on MSNBC. In it, he allegedly admits that during Zelenskyi’s presidency, the U.S. brought tactical nuclear weapons to Ukraine but removed them after nuclear threats from Russia.

However, this is false. Biden was referring to weapons that were removed from Ukraine as part of nuclear disarmament in the 1990s.

On January 17, 2025, MSNBC did indeed air the interview mentioned in the propaganda posts. When asked whether he had spoken with Putin to deter him from using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the former president replied: “Nuclear weapons, tactical nuclear, in Europe scares the hell out of everybody, including the Russians. .. He (Putin — ed.) said to me that what he wanted was to make sure that there were no nuclear weapons in … Ukraine, that they weren’t a member of NATO. .. I said: ‘That’s not a problem. We’ve already taken the nuclear weapons out. So I took them all out. There’s none there. We’re not going to put you back in, and they are  not going to become part of NATO until they change their system.”

However, Biden did not state that the U.S. had given Ukraine nuclear weapons. He only said that nuclear weapons had been removed from Ukraine, without specifying when or what kind. Most likely, he was referring to the outcomes of nuclear disarmament resulting from a series of agreements in the 1990s. In 1994, under the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and committed to transferring to Russia the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the USSR, in exchange for security assurances from the U.S., the UK, and Russia. As early as May 1992, Russia had removed tactical nuclear weapons from Ukraine, and by June 1996, Ukraine completed the transfer of about 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads to Russia in exchange for fuel for nuclear reactors. The U.S. also financed the dismantling or transportation of the weapons to Russia, allocating over $500 million under the Nunn–Lugar program.

Former national security advisor Jake Sullivan stated in early December 2024 that the U.S. was not considering returning nuclear weapons to Ukraine. Neither the IAEA nor any other institutions or intelligence services tracking nuclear proliferation have reported the transport of nuclear warheads to Ukraine.

It is impossible to bring nuclear weapons into or out of a country without noticeable signs. Their maintenance requires large-scale infrastructure, which was completely dismantled in Ukraine during nuclear disarmament. Moreover, hundreds of satellites like Maxar, Capella Space, and Planet Labs monitor the Earth’s surface and can track the location of nuclear infrastructure and warhead transportation. For example, in May 2024, The New York Times journalists used satellite data to identify the likely location of Russian nuclear warheads in Belarus. Therefore, any transfer of nuclear weapons to Ukraine would have been reported by the media and OSINT analysts.

Ukrainian officials have also denied rumors about plans to develop a domestic nuclear arsenal. In October 2024, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi stated that Ukraine continues to uphold the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

We previously debunked false information claiming that Ukraine would receive modified F-16s capable of carrying nuclear warheads.