Ukraine voluntarily renounced its vast Soviet-era nuclear arsenal after independence, transferring all nuclear warheads to Russia by 1996 in exchange for security assurances via the 1994 Budapest Memorandum from the US, UK, and Russia, but now deeply regrets this decision following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the 2022 invasion, which it calls broken promises. Nine countries possess nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD South Africa, under President FW de Klerk, voluntarily dismantled its nuclear weapons program in the late 1980s/early 1990s, becoming the...