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Retired British Colonel Richard Kemp made a provocative statement during the Black Sea Security Forum in Odesa, arguing that the United Kingdom should help Ukraine restore its nuclear arsenal as part of their recently signed long-term partnership agreement, according to Espreso.tv.
“You can’t deter a nuclear-armed country without nuclear capability, and you can’t deter tactical nuclear weapons without strategic nuclear weapons. It’s meaningless,” Kemp stated. “So I believe part of that declaration should have been a UK commitment to develop nuclear weapons [for Ukraine].”
Kemp criticized the West’s failure to deliver on past promises, referring to the Budapest Memorandum signed by the UK in 1994, in which London pledged security guarantees to Ukraine in exchange for its denuclearization.
“Help in developing Ukraine’s own nuclear capability must be provided,” Kemp added. “Ukraine gave it up in return for supposed Western guarantees that were never realized. So I don’t think we should simply ignore the nuclear issue, which seems today to be swept under the carpet — and I think that is a mistake.”
While Kemp’s remarks are not official UK policy, they reflect growing frustration among some Western security experts over Russia’s unchecked aggression and the limitations of conventional deterrence.
The technical feasibility of Ukraine restoring nuclear weapons has been widely debated. Experts say it would require years of enrichment or reactor-based plutonium production, along with the development of advanced delivery systems — all under intense international scrutiny.
