Zelenskyy says giving up nuclear weapons was "stupid and irresponsible"

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has criticized the Budapest Memorandum, calling its signing "absolutely stupid, illogical and very irresponsible."

The President said this in an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Foglio, the Office of the President reports.

Zelenskyy believes that in return for abandoning nuclear weapons, Ukraine should demand membership in NATO, which could become "real security guarantees."

"If I were to exchange nuclear weapons, I would exchange them for something very strong that can really stop any attacker. This is a strong army and a security bloc. Therefore, I believe that it was stupid, absolutely stupid, illogical and very irresponsible to exchange them like this," Zelenskyy said.

The President said that in peacetime, NATO membership is a guarantee of security, and in wartime, a strong army.

"It was at least dangerous to exchange it for nothing. It was necessary to exchange it for real security guarantees, and then it was only NATO. Honestly, today it is only NATO," he noted.

As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, Steven Pifer, Director of the Brookings Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, believes that with the signing of the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine did not receive security guarantees, but assurances about it. There is a significant difference between these concepts, and at the time of signing the document, Ukrainian diplomats perfectly understood the difference between these terms.

Ukrposhta has released a new stamp dedicated to the Budapest Memorandum. It reads: "The Budapest Memorandum is bull***t."

December 5 was the anniversary of the signing of the Budapest Memorandum: how Ukraine lost its nuclear weapons and whether it could have been prevented.

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