"Centuries" before, it was part of the Soviet Union, which gave it its current territories from parts of Poland, Hungary, Romania and Crimea. > It's mistake re

"Centuries" before, it was part of the Soviet Union, which gave it its current territories from parts of Poland, Hungary, Romania and Crimea. > It's mistake really was to give up its nukes I partly agree. Note though that the nukes were never theirs in the first place. The Russians always had the triggers without which they couldn't be made operational. The nukes were also under full control of the Russian armed forces, in Ukraine. And, as I wrote earlier, it was a condition of the Soviet Union (now Russia), that independent Ukraine can never be a nuclear power and that is why the 'Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine' explicitly says so. In fact, at one point Ukraine was refusing to give it up and Russia was thinking about attacking Ukraine. But this was the period when the west and Russia were on talking terms to each other, and so the other western superpowers, who also didn't want another nuclear weapon state in Europe worked with Russia to pressure Ukraine to honour its terms of independence and transfer the nuclear weapons to Russia.