Extremely difficult to judge those times through today’s lens because in the 1990’s the people running Ukraine were people like Leonid Kuchma - the same that ra

Extremely difficult to judge those times through today’s lens because in the 1990’s the people running Ukraine were people like Leonid Kuchma - the same that ran Ukraine under the USSR. My understanding is that at that time everyone was confused, and the U.S. was mainly concerned over who exactly is to have the weapons that remained after the dissolution of the USSR (this was during the first war in Iraq which was fought against the U.S. with U.S. weapons and training). I don’t think anyone in power in Russia or Ukraine was really concerned about that aspect, and they were willing to trade all of those weapons for economic security, stability etc. A Russian-Ukrainian conflict would also have been absurd and unfathomable at the time.