Why was the Russian Federation the only former SSR to inherit the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons and not distributed amongst them?
Because the entire control infrastructure for the weapons was centralized around Moscow. Because it was primarily the RSFSR that developed them. Because Russia took on the entire sovereign debt of the USSR. Because Russia inherited the USSR’s UN security council seat. Because there was an enormous risk of instability and many of the newly created states were highly corrupt and would have sold them to the highest bidder, as Ukraine did with much of what it inherited from the Soviet Union.
I was half way through typing this when I saw you did. Thanks for saving me a couple sentences… that I now have used to thank you.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
Long story short: The fewer nuclear powers, the better. A bunch of countries promised to protect the sovereignty of these countries if they returned the weapons to russia. Didn’t quite work out.
With the acknowledgement so long as no foreign power is intervening in the country. With the color revolution (The maiden coupe) this was clearly violated
