Reuters reported that on December 1, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the US is not considering returning to Ukraine the nuclear weapons it gave up after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Mr Sullivan made the statement when asked about a New York Times report last month that 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're doing is giving Ukraine a lot of conventional capabilities so they can defend themselves effectively and fight Russia, not giving them nuclear capabilities," Sullivan told ABC.
Last week, Russia said the idea was “absolutely insane” and that preventing such a scenario was one of the reasons Russia sent troops into Ukraine.
Ukraine inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union after its collapse in 1991 but gave them up under a 1994 agreement - the Budapest Memorandum - in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the US and Britain.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called reports that Ukraine could possess nuclear weapons another provocation.
President Putin noted that any steps towards the creation of nuclear weapons by Ukraine will be met with an appropriate response; Russia will not allow the creation of nuclear weapons in Ukraine under any circumstances.
Mr. Putin also emphasized that Russia will monitor whether any Western country wants to transfer nuclear weapons to Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the idea of supplying nuclear weapons to Ukraine came from the "radical faction" of Kiev's supporters in the West who have lost touch with reality.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now Deputy Chairman of the Russian National Security Council, warned that Russia would view any threat of the US supplying nuclear weapons to Ukraine as preparation for a direct war with Russia.
The transfer of nuclear weapons would actually be tantamount to an attack on the country according to Russia's new nuclear doctrine, Medvedev stressed.
