Fact-checking Chris Christie on U.S. security obligations toward Ukraine

During the third Republican presidential debate, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie explained that his support for Ukraine against the continuing Russian invasion traces back to promises made during the 1990s.

"In 1992, this country made a promise to Ukraine," Christie said during the Nov. 8 debate in Miami. "We said, ‘If you return nuclear missiles that were part of the old Soviet Union to Russia, and they invade you, we will protect you.’"

This makes the U.S. obligation to defend Ukraine sound cut and dried. However, as we’ve previously written, it was anything but.

Christie’s campaign did not respond to an inquiry for this article.

When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the rest of the world expressed concern over the fate of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, which was spread across not just Russia but also three newly independent states, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.

Belarus and Kazakhstan agreed to dismantle or return to Russia what they had. But Ukraine looked at the roughly 1,900 warheads on its soil and began seeking something in exchange before it ceded them.

"Essentially, it was something that they traded off in order to encourage international recognition," Brian Finlay, a specialist in nonproliferation at the Stimson Center, a military-focused Washington, D.C., think tank told PolitiFact in 2015.

According to a 2011 report by Steven Pifer, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000, Ukraine wanted Russia to promise to respect its sovereignty and its borders, a promise that Russia made but has since broken. Ukraine also wanted money, and it knew that going non-nuclear would open the door to better ties with the West.

In early 1994, the United States agreed to provide money to dismantle Ukraine’s nuclear infrastructure, while Russia agreed to forgive Ukraine’s debts. In December 1994, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom and Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum of Security Assurances.

The agreement reaffirmed certain commitments among the parties:

• To respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.
• To refrain from threatening or using force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.

And to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to aid Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.