Reuters reported that on December 1, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the US was not considering returning to Ukraine the nuclear weapons it had given up after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Mr. Sullivan made a statement when asked about a New York Times article last month, saying that some unnamed Western officials had suggested that US President Joe Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine before he left office.
"No, that's not on the table. What we are doing is increasing the conventional capabilities for Ukraine so that they can effectively defend themselves and fight Russia, not giving them nuclear capabilities," Mr. Sullivan told ABC.
Last week, Russia said the idea was "completely crazy" and that blocking such a scenario was one of the reasons Russia sent troops into Ukraine.
Ukraine inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union after the Soviet collapse in 1991 but abandoned them under a 1994 agreement - the Budapest Memorandum of Understanding - in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the US and the UK.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called the reports that Ukraine could possess nuclear weapons another province.
President Putin noted that any step towards the creation of nuclear weapons from Ukraine will face appropriate reactions; Russia will not allow the creation of nuclear weapons in Ukraine under any circumstances.
Mr. Putin also emphasized that Russia will monitor which Western country wants to transfer nuclear weapons to Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the idea of providing nuclear weapons to Ukraine came from the "extreme faction" of Kiev's supporters in the West, who have lost touch with reality.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of Russia's National Security Council, warned that Russia would consider any threat of the US supplying nuclear weapons to Ukraine as preparation for a direct war with Russia.
The transfer of nuclear weapons would effectively amount to an attack on the country under Russia's new nuclear doctrine, Medvedev stressed.
