How did newly independent Ukraine come to give up the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union? This talk uses newly declassified British, Canadian, French, German, and US archival evidence to reconstruct the diplomacy of Ukraine’s denuclearization not just as a trilateral story about Russia, Ukraine, and the United States. The lecture will be held at the Faculty of Arts, Charles Unviersity (nám. Jana Palacha 1/2, Prague 1, room P209), on 24 November 2025 at 4:00–5:30 pm.

A much wider range of Western actors, including the United States but also Canada and Western Europe, shaped outcomes along with their Ukrainian and Russian counterparts. A focus on nuclear security on the part of Western policymakers dominated relations with Ukraine, hindering the newly independent state’s integration into the emerging post–Cold War security order as well as its desperately needed economic development and reform process. Today, with questions about whether having held onto the Soviet-era nuclear arsenal still echoing in the wake of Russia’s expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2024, this article sheds new historical light on how Ukraine came to find itself occupying such a place in European security.

You may find the full annotation here.