Kremlin slams Zelensky’s suggestion of nuclear weapons for Ukraine

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday dismissed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s suggestion that Ukraine should have nuclear weapons.

“In principle, such statements and remarks border on madness,” Peskov told the Russian state news agency TASS.

In an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan published on YouTube on Tuesday evening, Zelensky raised the issue of what security guarantees his country would receive if its hoped-for NATO accession were to be delayed by years or even decades.

“What support package, what missiles [will we get]? Or will we get nuclear missiles? Then we should be given nuclear missiles,” he said.

Ukraine surrendered the last Soviet nuclear weapons on its territory in 1994 in return for vague security assurances from Moscow, London and Washington.

Zelensky also said that he was ready to negotiate with Russia if it would bring peace to Ukraine. Peskov dismissed this as “empty talk,” saying Zelensky had banned himself from negotiating.

Peskov was referring to a decree signed by Zelensky in September 2022, after Russia annexed the four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson.

While the decree does not prohibit negotiations with Moscow, it states that they are impossible in view of the situation.