Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) accused President Joe Biden of leading Ukraine into a nuclear war by giving weapons to Ukraine following a brief reference in a New York Times article. The nukes in question, however, are not in the United States.
Greene shared a post by independent journalist Kyle Becker on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday morning. Becker's original post claimed that Biden's government is "considering the return of Nuclear Weapons to Ukraine." The weapons in question were taken from Ukraine following the fall of the Soviet Union.
"Outgoing administration officials (the admin that massively lost the popular vote and electoral college) should be arrested if they give nuclear weapons to Ukraine. Starting a nuclear war on your way out is treason. The American people do NOT want anything to do with this!!!" Greene tweeted.
https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1861416334069735861
The claim originates from a New York Times article published Thursday, called "Trump’s Vow to End the War Could Leave Ukraine With Few Options." That article read, in part:
“Several officials even suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union. That would be an instant and enormous deterrent. But such a step would be complicated and have serious implications.”
The Kyiv Post points out that though many nuclear weapons were indeed surrendered by Ukraine following the collapse of the USSR, the nuclear weapons did not go to the United States. They were returned to Russia during the 1990s. In return, Russia gave Ukraine 100 tons of reactor fuels and Ukraine received safety guarantees from Russia, the U.S. and the U.K.
Ukraine's official website says prior to surrendering the nuclear weapons, they had over 4,000 nuclear warheads, plus 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 103 strategic bombers. Since the return of these weapons to Russia in 1996, Ukraine does not have any nuclear weapons, according to the country's official website and The Independent.
Putin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov condemned the suggestion that the U.S. could return these nuclear weapons to Ukraine, according to Turkish newspaper Anadolu Ajansi.
“This is absolutely irresponsible reasoning from people who probably have a poor understanding and imagination of reality,” Peskov said.
The specter of nuclear war has come up again since November 19, when Russian President Vladimir Putin made changes to rules regarding when Russia could launch a nuclear attack, according to Reuters. Two days earlier, Biden allowed Ukraine to use U.S.-made non-nuclear weapons to conduct long-range attacks into Russia, Reuters reported.
