UK should support Ukraine in restoring nuclear arsenal, says British military expert

He made this statement on Saturday, May 31, 2025, during the Black Sea Security Forum 2025 in Odesa, according to MP Oleksiy Honcharenko, who attended the event.

“Britain must help Ukraine develop its own nuclear weapons under the strategic partnership agreement,” he quoted the British officer as saying.

As a reminder, in 1994, the United Kingdom was among the signatories of the Budapest Memorandum, under which it guaranteed Ukraine’s security in the event of external aggression.

How long would it take Ukraine to restore nuclear weapons? 

An atomic bomb can be created in two different ways: using uranium or plutonium, Radio Svoboda explained in April.

To create nuclear weapons, the uranium isotope U-235 is needed, and it makes up only 0.7% of natural uranium, with the rest (over 99%) being the unusable U-238 isotope. To convert regular uranium into weapon-grade material, it must be enriched, meaning the U-235 content is increased to about 90%, as it is capable of sustaining the chain reaction necessary for an explosion.

"Enrichment is mainly carried out using centrifuges: uranium is converted into a gaseous state and often passed through these centrifuges. Due to centrifugal force, heavier molecules with uranium-238 shift to the wall, while lighter molecules with uranium-235 move closer to the center. This process is repeated many times in large numbers of centrifuge systems (also called 'cascades'), because the isotope ratio in uranium barely changes after one enrichment cycle: this requires huge power and many repetitions," according to an article published on April 20, 2025.

The "plutonium route," however, is simpler than the "uranium route" because it is technologically easier to build a reactor and radiochemical production than to set up all the necessary systems for uranium-based nuclear weapons.

Additionally, plutonium has a significant advantage with its critical mass: 10 kilograms versus 50 kilograms for uranium, and it is easier to extract 10 kilograms of plutonium than 50 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium.

• In January 2025, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that Ukraine should have given up nuclear weapons only in exchange for NATO membership, and that the way the then-government acted, trusting the Budapest Memorandum, was "stupid, absolutely stupid, illogical, and very irresponsible."