Former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has identified the removal of Ukraine's tactical nuclear weapons, the decision not to sign an EU Association Agreement in Vilnius, and the failure to prevent Russia's seizure of Crimea in 2014 as three fatal mistakes during Ukraine's years of independence.
Kuchma, Ukraine's second president, expressed this view in an interview with Ukrinform.
"Among the unquestionable mistakes, I would definitely name the catastrophic decision not to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union in Vilnius. But, emotionally, the hardest thing for me personally to accept is the de facto surrender of Crimea in February-March 2014. There was no response to the actions of the 'little green men,' who calmly and brazenly took control of the Ukrainian peninsula. Let me remind you: formally, they were not even identified as Russians. They were unknown terrorists, and they should have been dealt with accordingly. A decisive response in Crimea could have stopped the attempted annexation at its very beginning," Kuchma said.
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He also separately mentioned the loss of Ukraine's nuclear weapons. According to the former president, agreeing to the removal of Ukraine's tactical nuclear weapons in 1992 was a fatal mistake. He said that by 1994, when the Budapest Memorandum was concluded, there was essentially nothing left to decide regarding Ukraine's strategic security – everything had already been settled two years earlier.
