The previously confidential documents also reveal how Moscow wanted Greenpeace to inspect the vast arsenal in the 1990s.
The cables show signs of Russia being dangerous and unpredictable as the West encouraged non-proliferation in the run-up to the Budapest Memorandum, where Ukraine agreed to give up the weaponry it had been left with after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Filed by British diplomats, the frank assessments seem prophetic as viewed from the optics of Vladimir Putin’s 2014 military aggression and subsequent full-scale invasion, which is nearing its third year.
Released three decades on, the messages reveal the British intelligence backdrop as discussions took place on the road to Ukraine — which became an independent country amid the Soviet collapse — agreeing in December 1994 to give up the nuclear weapons.
One reads: ‘The political mood in Moscow is indeed moving in a direction adverse to Ukrainian interests. But for the time being at least, the Russians are not motivated by neo-imperalism.
‘While both sides have some grounds for complaint, as seen from here the Russian view that the Ukrainians are trying to hold them to ransom on crucial bilateral issues (gas, debt, nuclear) has substance…
‘The West has strong reasons for resisting Ukrainians’ pleas for partisan intervention on their behalf. But we do need to take steps with both sides to help stop the relationship going off the rails.’
Commentators are divided as to whether Russia would still have launched military aggression against Ukraine in 2014, including the illegal annexation of Crimea, and then the full-blown attack if Kyiv had kept the arsenal.
But the documents, which have been released at the National Archives in Kew, London, show how the UK knew behind the scenes that the region was a powderkeg.
Another cable warns: ‘The most dangerous flashpoint is Russia/Ukraine.
‘There are all too many potential points of conflict and on some of them (eg the Black Sea fleet) there will be little alternative to hoping that the parties manage to sort something out.’
The dispatch continues: ‘Reluctance to get involved in a can of worms is understandable, but if we do not go for effective international involvement now we may find it too late to do so when things turn nasty.’
Neither document is signed with a name but the distribution list shows they were distributed within the UK government, including the Ministry of Defence and Cabinet Office.
Another telegram marked ‘confidential’ states that, ‘we have recently heard comments from some in Russia indicating that the Russian Federation may be considering changes in its publicly stated “no first use” policy.’
The briefing, which was also written anonymously, warns that ‘now is not the right time’ for the discussion to become public as the proposals could be seen as ‘threatening’ by some of the country’s neighbours.
The dispatch was filed in May 1993. By November that year Russia had formally abandoned the no first use policy which had been adopted by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev 11 years earlier.
Ukraine loses nuclear status
Ukraine inherited the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Through a trilateral process, Kyiv agreed to transfer the warheads to Russia for dismantling.
In return, security assurances were provided by Moscow and the other signatories, the UK and the US.
The last warheads were transferred from Ukraine to Russia in 1996.
(Source: Stephen Pifer/Brookings)
Another document about the safety of the nuclear weapons in Ukraine details how Georgiy Mamedov, the then Russian deputy foreign minister, suggested over lunch that Greenpeace should carry out inspections.
The missive, sent from Moscow, reads: ‘I challenged Mamedov’s notion that Greenpeace would be a suitable body to carry out safety inspections: they lacked the expertise and, given their known bias against nuclear weapons, would be bound to say that they were unsafe.
‘Would it not be better to have them inspected by some impartial experts, such as the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]?’
The message to cleared government recipients in London, sent in November 93, is signed ‘SPECAN 0001’.
A further section says that Mamedov had warned that the ‘weapons would become too dangerous to move in 7-8 months’ time.’
The author writes: ‘This may still be nothing but scare-mongering by the Russians. But the Ukrainian ambassador in Moscow, in the course of a press conference on Kozyrev’s [Russian minister] visit to Ukraine, did not deny directly that the weapons were becoming unsafe: he claimed instead that Russia had unsafe weapons and that Ukraine would keep the international community informed about the state of “its” weapons.’
Ukraine agreed to trade in the inherited weapons when it signed the memorandum along with the US, UK and Russia.
The three powers provided security assurances to Kyiv, pledging to ‘respect the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine.’
In a briefing paper published in 2014, researcher Mariana Budjeryn, an expert in Soviet nuclear issues, wrote: ‘The perceptions of Russian threat to the territorial integrity of Ukraine that underpinned its demands for security guarantees in the early 1990s have proved justified.
‘Bereft of allies and weakened by perennial bad governance that led to an internal political crisis, Ukraine became an easy target for Mr. Putin.
‘The Budapest Memorandum failed to deter Russian aggression because it imposed no immediate cost for its violation.
‘The political assurances it provided rested on the goodwill and self-restraint of the guarantors, an arrangement that can work between allies but not potential adversaries.’
Putin has repeatedly used nuclear sabre-rattling to threaten the West in relation to his war in Ukraine.
The Kremlin presides over the world’s largest inventory of the weapons, with 5,580 warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
However, some analysts believe the threat needs to be faced down in order to provide Ukraine with the weapons for its existential fight.
Dr Patrick Bury, a former British air assault infantry Captain, previously told that the West should show some ‘cajones’ in the face of the Russian president’s nuclear rhetoric.
Dr Bury, a security and defence specialist at the University of Bath, said that the threats had led to a ‘salami slicing’ of the West’s provision of arms.
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