From 23 May 1990 to 13 January 1993, Hugues Pernet represented France in Ukraine, first as Consul General, then as French Ambassador from 1 January 1993.er April 1992. He was the first French diplomat to hold these posts, when Ukraine proclaimed its independence from the USSR on 24 August 1991, which was dissolved on 26 December.
This "cadre d'Orient", who went on to become Director of Continental Europe at the Quai d'Orsay, then French Ambassador to Serbia and Montenegro (where he followed Montenegro's independence in 2006) and Uzbekistan, recounts his experience in Ukraine in "Journal du premier ambassadeur de France à Kiev 1990-1993 : aux origines de la guerre" (Flammarion, March 2023). Here he looks back at the complex denuclearisation of Ukraine during his time in office.
WHY WAS THE NUCLEAR ISSUE A PRIORITY WHEN YOU TOOK UP YOUR POST IN KIEV IN 1990 AS CONSUL GENERAL OF FRANCE AND THEN AMBASSADOR?
When the USSR broke up, the United States, the United Kingdom and France were faced with a major risk of nuclear proliferation in Europe. They had to deal with a crisis that was likely to upset the world's strategic balance, in a hurry, without being really prepared, with virtually unknown interlocutors.
It was the day after the Belovej (or Minsk) agreements of 8 December 1991, which established the emergence of new state entities: the Russian Federation, led by Boris Yeltsin, and Ukraine, presided over by Leonid Kravchuk (elected, like his Russian counterpart, by universal suffrage), to the detriment of the USSR, whose President, Mikhail Gorbachev, did not have the legitimacy conferred by the ballot box. As it happened, several thousand Soviet nuclear weapons were deployed on the territories of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, in an offensive posture.
How could we manage this complex situation from which four new nuclear powers could emerge, Russia with an arsenal of over 10,000 nuclear warheads, Ukraine with 3,600, Belarus and Kazakhstan with a few hundred?
The newly independent Ukraine posed, somewhat unwillingly, a serious and very specific problem. A political, legal, operational and militarily reliable solution had to be found quickly for the possible use of the thousands of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons deployed on its territory before their effective transfer to Russia.
In short, who was ultimately responsible for the decision to use nuclear weapons in this rapidly changing area: Mr Gorbachev, Mr Yeltsin, Mr Kravchuk, or Marshal Chapochnikov, the then Soviet Defence Minister?
This real crisis went completely unnoticed by the general public and even today by historians, perhaps because its origin was not the result of external aggression or internal sedition.
It was totally inconceivable to the French, British and American authorities that a major military nuclear power would emerge overnight in Europe. Added to this was the fact that nobody in the West knew who might be responsible for such an arsenal. Only President Gorbachev was known.
WHAT WAS THE WESTERN STRATEGY IN THIS CONTEXT?
It should be remembered that on 16 July 1990, in its declaration of sovereignty when it was still part of the USSR, Kiev announced that it wanted to be "neutral and nuclear-free".
The President of the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, was received for the first time (not without difficulty, as the Soviet President had to be spared) by French President François Mitterrand on 3 October 1991. He had to get to know someone who was likely to be at the head of an arsenal twelve times greater in number than that of our country (3,600 warheads compared with 300).
On this occasion, the President of the Ukrainian Parliament explained to the highest French authorities his country's inevitable march towards independence and its future defence policy.
According to President Kravchuk, Ukraine was going to have a conventional national army. The problem of nuclear weapons was of a different nature, in his view. Although Ukraine wanted to be denuclearised, the fact remained that it found itself, if not in the lead, at least with a large number of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons deployed on its territory.
The President's interlocutor confirmed that he did not wish to take part in the decision on nuclear fire. This function could be devolved, on a transitional basis, he said, to Mr Gorbachev but not to a President of a Republic. This was a euphemism for President Yeltsin, who, just two days after Ukraine declared independence on 24 August 1991, threatened to revise its borders and take back the Donbass and Crimea. That was more than 30 years ago!
Over time, Ukraine's position hardened. It did not want the weapons deployed on its territory to be transferred to the Russian Federation. It conceded an interim role to the outgoing President, Gorbachev, but demanded control over the transfers and security guarantees from the Western nuclear powers to counter the Russian hostility that had already been clearly expressed. War with its neighbour was already seen as inevitable. In President Kravchuk's office at the end of 1992, his diplomatic adviser asked me directly: "What will France's attitude be in the event of open conflict with the Russians in Crimea? "The United States will not get involved," he added.
The Russian Federation was not to be outdone, instilling doubts in the West as to whether Ukraine really wanted to give up its nuclear weapons. Ears were perked up in the West because Ukraine had major research centres and nuclear and ballistic companies. The country was going through a major economic crisis and the risks of proliferation of nuclear and ballistic technologies were taken very seriously.
SO WHAT MEASURES HAVE BEEN TAKEN?
The decision was quickly taken in the West: the Russian Federation would not be the successor state to the USSR, but its successor. It would thus benefit directly from the USSR's seat on the UN Security Council and from the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal. The 3,600 Ukrainian nuclear warheads were gradually transferred to Russia.
The question that remained unanswered was the nature of the security guarantees that the West would be prepared to grant to a Ukraine that had become independent and faced a Russian Federation to which it felt it owed a great deal.
The West and NATO had won an unprecedented victory without having to count the dead. Over a hundred million people in Eastern Europe had been freed from the Soviet yoke.
It was a time of mutual trust. The United States considered that the essential task, the dismemberment of the Soviet enemy, had been achieved. The Europeans had a duty to bring the newly emancipated states up to standard. Clearly, Ukraine was not part of the American zone of influence. The Americans had already turned their attention to their objectives in the Pacific. As for the EU, at the time it did not have the means to offer any kind of perspective to a country with a population of fifty million. It was time to take a breather, to be gentle with a Russia that should not be humiliated, at the risk of jeopardising recent achievements.
In addition, elections in the United States had brought a Democratic President to the White House. At the end of 1992, a bi-partisan vision on the question of security guarantees to be offered to Ukraine was the subject of a consensus in the United States. A delegation of Democratic and Republican senators, Nunn and Lugar, had adopted an approach of as a minimumThis led two years later to the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. This text is not a treaty, as its name suggests. It stipulates that the Russian Federation recognises the territorial integrity of Ukraine and undertakes not to use nuclear weapons against the country, which has voluntarily renounced them. The West, and the United States in particular, was hardly committed. France did not sign this document. It would join later.
Thanks to the pragmatism and efficiency of the leaders of the time, a major risk of nuclear proliferation was avoided. However, the result was imperfect and precarious.
FOR WHAT REASONS?
It was clear from this crisis that the end of the Soviet empire was profoundly different from the fall of previous empires, whether Persian, Roman, Austro-Hungarian or Turkish. The difference lay, and still lies, in the fact that the Russian Federation, although on the brink of collapse at the time, although it had ceded back the western margins of its empire without any real quid pro quo, was, thanks to its first-rate nuclear capability, still capable of destroying the planet several times over, including the United States. This was and remains a determining factor.
The dismantling of a nuclear power by force, internal sedition or simply the constitutional evolution of power can generate proliferation risks out of all proportion to what is at stake. Today, it is clear that the United States does not want to take this risk with Russia under any circumstances.
The internal weakness of a nuclear power can offer an unexpected defence to its regime, since it could prove dangerous to seek to destabilise it without first ensuring what happens to the nuclear weapons in its possession.
