Ukraine nuclear missile museum is a bitter reminder of what the country gave up : NPR

POBUZKE, Ukraine. In the middle of vast agricultural fields in southern Ukraine, you'll find what was once a secret Soviet launch site for intercontinental ballistic missiles. Today it is the Strategic Missile Forces Museum.

In addition to chronicling the Cold War arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States, the museum tells the story of how Ukraine dismantled its nuclear weapons arsenal – with assurances from the US, Britain and Russia that its sovereignty would be respected – shortly after it became an independent country in 1991.

Today, most Ukrainians believe that the decision to abandon nuclear weapons was a fatal mistake. For them, the museum is a bitter reminder of what they say was their “naivety” and “betrayal.”

There were few visitors on this cold, windy December day, but Igor Volodin and Inna Kravchuk arrived from the neighboring Cherkasy region.

“I think this is part of our history, and it’s important to know about it,” Kravchuk says. But she says it also angers her: “If we had kept these weapons, Russia probably wouldn't have attacked. Nuclear weapons were our insurance policy.”

Gennady Vladimirovich Fil, a 65-year-old guide, once served here as a lieutenant colonel in the elite missile forces. He attributes his youthful complexion to the time he spent in an underground bunker at the facility.

Phil says it's unlikely that anyone of a certain age leaves the museum without swearing.

But this betrayal was preceded by four decades of the Cold War arms race, and this museum takes visitors deep into that era on the Soviet side. Black-and-white portraits of stern-eyed Soviet commanders and chests full of medals stare down from the walls, while old rotary phones and outdated 1960s control panels help recreate the grim atmosphere of the era. This place is at once eerie, exciting and sometimes stunning in detail.

Phil uses a long pointer to highlight wall maps and diagrams depicting the arms race and planned mutual destruction between the US and USSR. He says the 10 intercontinental ballistic missiles once based here could reach the US East Coast within 25 minutes of launch. Each can carry 10 nuclear warheads with a destructive capacity of 200,000 square kilometers or 77,000 square miles. approximately the size of Nebraska.

When the USSR collapsed in 1991, Ukraine was left with third largest nuclear arsenal in the worldafter the USA and Russia. In January 1994, then-President Bill Clinton stopped in Kyiv on his way to Moscow for talks with Ukraine's first democratically elected president, Leonid Kravchuk. Later that year, an agreement was reached for Ukraine to renounce nuclear weapons.

This agreement is known as Budapest Memorandumwas signed in Hungary by Ukraine, Russia, the USA and the UK. The three countries that signed the agreement promised that its territorial integrity would be respected.

The museum shows a newsreel showing how Ukraine's nuclear missiles were destroyed in the mid-1990s. Aircraft capable of carrying nuclear warheads were also dismantled. The 10 silos that once housed missiles have been filled with concrete, except for one, which is kept as an exhibit on the museum grounds, where visitors can see a massive decommissioned missile nested inside the silo.

There is also an extensive display of equipment from various Soviet and Russian wars: World War II, Afghanistan in the 1980s, and destroyed Russian tanks from the current war in Ukraine. There is also one of the missiles that the Soviets fired at the US from Cuba during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, known locally as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Fil notes bitterly that a few years later, Ukraine also gave Russia several aircraft to pay off natural gas debts.

“Now,” he says, “Russia is bombing us with our own planes.”

On this day, the museum is also visited by the Danish Ambassador to Kyiv, Thomas Lund-Sorensen. He says that while reducing the number of countries with nuclear weapons is always a positive thing, he agrees that what happened to Ukraine was a “disgrace.”

“They walked away from them with the promises of the three powers, and obviously the guarantees given by Russia at that time were not worth the paper they were written on,” says Lund-Sorensen.

Even Clinton expressed regret about the Budapest Memorandum. In an interview with Irish television channel RTE a year after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022: Clinton said“I feel terrible about this… and I feel personally invested because I got them to agree to give up their nuclear weapons. And none of them believe that Russia would have pulled off this stunt if Ukraine still had their weapons.”

The museum is a painful reminder of what happened and underscores why Ukraine insists that iron-clad security guarantees be part of any peace deal with Russia today.

Phil takes visitors through an underground hallway the length of two football fields before opening a 2,000-pound door that leads to a tiny elevator.

The NPR team races to descend 150 feet into an underground mine. The doors open into a tiny living space with three beds, a toilet, a stove and musty, strange-smelling air. Phil says this is where the launch crew could live for up to 45 days in the event of a nuclear war. A wall ladder leads through a hole in the ceiling to the launch room above.

We climb through. After seating us in the two upper command seats, which are bolted to the floor and equipped with seat belts (Phil says a direct nuclear strike from America would cause an explosion equivalent to an earthquake measuring 12 on the Richter scale), Phil flips the switch. The ancient-looking control board lights up. He places our hands on a button and key to simulate the launch of a nuclear missile.

To launch a rocket, two people need to make two gestures. When he gives the start command, press the button and turn the key. A loud alarm starts to sound. On the screen above we see a simulation of ballistic missiles rising from silos and being launched one after another in a fireball.

Despite recent threats to Russia, Fil says he does not believe Russian President Vladimir Putin would dare use nuclear weapons.

“They're too unpredictable,” he says. He adds that Russia also knows that such an act will lead to severe consequences.

In the simulation, we watch rockets fly through space. Soon they begin to hit their targets.

The view from space on our screen shows mushroom clouds blooming across the planet as the narrator describes a chain reaction that drains all the oxygen from the atmosphere and thus destroys life on our planet.

Phil says he's grateful it didn't come to that. But he still regrets that Ukraine abandoned nuclear deterrence.