Ukraine not considering nuclear weapons, says top official

Ukraine is not considering developing nuclear weapons and recent reports on the topic were driven by an incorrect interpretation of remarks by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, his chief of staff said on Friday, News.Az reports citing foreign media.

Zelenskiy said he spoke with Trump about Ukraine's negative experience with the Budapest Memorandum, a 1994 deal that gave Ukraine security "assurances" from Britain, Russia and the United States in return for relinquishing the nuclear weapons it had inherited with the break-up of the Soviet Union.

"I told him: What is the way out – either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, and then this is defence for us, or we should have some kind of an alliance," the Ukrainian leader told reporters at a European Union summit in Brussels.

But Zelenskiy also declared: "We are not choosing nuclear weapons, we are choosing NATO."

News.Az