Trump’s team believes that Ukraine had no right to the nuclear weapons transferred to Russia in 1994

Representatives of U.S. President Donald Trump have stated that Ukraine had no right to the nuclear weapons it handed over to Russia in 1994 when it signed the Budapest Memorandum.

“Let’s be clear about the Budapest Memorandum: the nuclear weapons belonged to Russia and were remnants. Ukraine returned the nuclear weapons to Russia. They were not Ukraine’s. That’s an uncomfortable fact,” wrote Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell on social media platform X.

The context in which Grenell made this post was not specified.

U.S. Republican Senator Mike Lee agreed with Grenell.

“The nuclear weapons did not belong to Ukraine. And there was never a treaty obligating the U.S. to abide by the Budapest Memorandum,” he wrote.

As a reminder, in February, President Zelensky stated that Ukraine should obtain nuclear weapons if it is not accepted into NATO, but Trump’s team rejected this idea.

Earlier, President Biden had said that Washington had promised Putin it would not accept Ukraine into NATO and would not provide it with nuclear weapons to strike the Kremlin.