By Chris Scott
In response to Phineas Worthington’s March 11 letter (“Support those who share our values”) I have to ask, are you sure of your history? I don’t remember a Soviet invasion of Ukraine or Kiev, nor can I find a historical record or press accounts of it.
A Soviet invasion of Kiev in 1991 would have been a huge international event reported exhaustively all over the world. Russia, if by land, would have to have traveled from Moscow, 100 kilometers and 12 hours away, one-third of that through Ukraine itself. So the lack of any historical mention means there was no “Soviet invasion.”
As to the U.S. and Russia being too preoccupied to deal with a Soviet invasion of Kiev in 1991, Ukraine’s disarmament of its nuclear weapons did not begin until 1994 and ended in 1996.
The most interesting part of Ukraine’s disarmament was that, as an “encouragement,” Ukraine received high payments from both the U.S. and Russia. In total, the U.S. gave Ukraine about $875 million. It is assumed Russia cancelled Ukraine’s debt of around $900 million. Effectively, Ukraine sold its store of nuclear weapons.
A bit more Ukraine history, circa 1991 and beyond, from Wikipedia:
?“On 16 July, 1990, the new parliament adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine. The declaration established the principles of the self-determination of the Ukrainian nation, its democracy, political and economic independence, and the priority of Ukrainian law on the Ukrainian territory over Soviet law.
A month earlier, a similar declaration was adopted by the parliament of the Russian SFSR. This started a period of confrontation between the central Soviet, and new republican authorities. In August 1991, a conservative faction among the Communist leaders of the Soviet Union attempted a coup to remove Mikhail Gorbachev and to restore the Communist party’s power. After the attempt failed, on Aug. 24, 1991, the Ukrainian parliament adopted the Act of Independence in which the parliament declared Ukraine as an independent democratic state.
“Ukraine was the second-most powerful republic in the Soviet Union, both economically and politically (behind only Russia), and its secession ended any realistic chance of Gorbachev keeping the Soviet Union together.
By December 1991, all former Soviet Republics except the RSFSR and the Kazakh SSR had also proclaimed themselves independent. A week after his election, Kravchuk joined with Yeltsin and Belarusian leader Stanislau Shushkevich in signing the Belavezha Accords, which declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The Soviet Union officially dissolved on Dec. 26.
“When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the newly independent Ukraine had on its territory what was the third largest strategic nuclear weapons arsenal in the world. It was larger than those of Britain, France, and China combined.
“In May 1992, Ukraine signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in which the country agreed to give up all (1,900) nuclear weapons to Russia for disposal and to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapon state. Ukraine ratified the treaty in 1994, and by 1996 the country became free of nuclear weapons.”
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Chris Scott is a resident of Sonoma.
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