President Volodymyr Zelenskiy shocked his Western allies last month at the EU summit by suggesting Ukraine needs to become a nuclear power again if it is not granted Nato membership soon. 

Zelenskiy followed up later in a call with incoming US president Donald Trump: “Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, and then they will be our defence, or we will have to enter into some kind of alliance. Apart from Nato, we do not know of any effective alliances today.”

The ultimatum sent ripples of concern around the world. A working paper prepared for the Ministry of Defence said Ukraine can build a low-yield atomic bomb “in a matter of months” using the resources already at its disposal. 

And Ukraine is not the only country looking at getting the bomb. As the geopolitical tensions mount, the lesson that the countries of the Global South are taking out of the Ukraine war is the best protection against US bullying is to build a bomb. The upshot of the East-West conflict is that it may spur more nuclear proliferation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has regularly played his nuclear war card and now Zelenskiy is in the same game. In the face of Nato’s refusal to even consider Ukraine’s membership, Zelenskiy has played his own nuclear weapons card in the hope of pushing the military alliance into a compromise.

Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin) quickly walked back from the controversial declaration, to put a cap on the subsequent outcry. Zelenskiy later clarified he had meant there were no alternative security guarantees and Kyiv has since denied it is considering building a nuclear bomb any time soon.

Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in 1996 following the Soviet Union's collapse, but Kyiv could still manufacture rudimentary nuclear weapons using plutonium produced at the nine working reactors at its four operational nuclear power plants (NPPs).

Ukraine currently has about seven tonnes of plutonium and could produce more by refining spent nuclear fuel from the NPPs, according to Professor Jeffery Lewis of the Middlebury Institute. However, that plutonium is in spent reactor fuel and would need to be refined – an expensive and difficult process.

A briefing paper on nuclear weapons was prepared this month for the Ministry of Defence, according to The Times. “Creating a simple atomic bomb, as the United States did within the framework of the Manhattan Project, would not be a difficult task 80 years later.”

According to Oleksii Yizhak of Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, Ukraine has enough reactor plutonium to make hundreds of low-yield warheads, similar to those used on Japan in WWII, capable of targeting military bases or infrastructure. “The amount of material is sufficient for hundreds of warheads with a tactical yield of several kilotonnes,” Yizhak said, according to reports.

The weapon would use similar technology to Fat Man, the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, the report stated, with each bomb having roughly one tenth of the power. Fat Man used 6kg of plutonium but it is possible to build a viable nuclear bomb with only 4kg of plutonium, experts say.

Nuclear sabre rattling

Putin has been accused of rattling his nuclear sabre regularly. The Kremlin has ordered active nuclear missile exercises on several occasions and moved nuclear missiles into Belarus, which borders the EU.

While few believe that Russia will use its nuclear missiles in the war in Ukraine, because there is a non-zero risk that it might, as bne IntelliNews has reported, the ploy has effectively limited Western support for Ukraine to “some, but not enough”, leaving Ukraine in a position where it can defend against the Russian attack but can’t win the war. The West remains first and foremost most concerned with avoiding a potential WWIII or a possible nuclear exchange, and with liberating Ukraine a distant second.

The one lesson the war in Ukraine has taught is that the West will not openly attack a nuclear power, and having nuclear missiles is a major cap on the level of aggression the US is prepared to provide.

Currently there are five recognised nuclear-weapon states under the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT): US, Russia, China, France and the UK. Last week, Tykhyi posted on X: "Ukraine is committed to the NPT. We do not possess, develop or intend to acquire nuclear weapons.”

Three more countries – India, Pakistan and North Korea – have bombs, but they are not signatories to the NPT. In addition, Israel has nuclear weapons, but has never publicly admitted it. Another five countries in Europe – Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey – participate in “nuclear sharing” where they host missiles on their territory. And finally, several former Soviet states and South Africa formerly had nuclear missiles, but voluntarily dismantled them in the 1990s.

Several countries are suspected of having secret nuclear missile development programmes, led by Iran, but including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Turkey. Other countries that have the money and technological capabilities to build a bomb if they wanted include: Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Egypt and Myanmar, according to experts. Previously Libya, Iraq and Syria all launched nuclear weapon development programmes, but later abandoned them due to the lack of resources.

The deterrence offered by the position of a nuclear missile is not lost on Iran, which is close to having a nuclear weapon, but doesn’t have one yet. During the April rocket barrage, US F-16s flew alongside Israeli planes and White House has no qualms about openly participating in the conflict between Iran and Israel.

That has spurred some in Tehran to call for Iran to build its own bomb. The widening regional war is pushing the Middle East towards a nuclear proliferation precipice. The changing attitude to Iran nuclear weapons was articulated in October when some lawmakers openly called for abandoning Tehran’s opposition to owning a bomb and urged the Supreme National Security Council to revise the country’s defence doctrine to permit the development of nuclear weapons. Hasanali Ekhlaki Amiri, an MP and a driving force behind the change of heart, challenged a long-standing fatwa by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which prohibits the production of nuclear weapons as un-Islamic.

bnm IntelliNews Tehran bureau reports that Iran is actually able to finish the development process it has started for refining nuclear fuel and build a bomb relatively quickly if it chose to.

However, both Ukraine and Iran realise that actually building a nuclear weapon would be a significant escalation that would more than likely provoke a military response from either Russia or the US to destroy the bomb making facilities or try to physically take control of them.

Putin said in October that any move by Ukraine to get nuclear weapons could not be concealed and would draw an appropriate Russian response. "Russia will not allow this to happen, no matter what," Reuters reported.

More likely is that both Ukraine and Iran, as well as other countries in the Global South, will launch secret programmes to develop their own nuclear weapons and present a working bomb to the world as a fait accompli.

And nuclear fuel and technology is becoming increasingly available. As bne IntelliNews reported, uranium is the new gas. Russia’s nuclear exports are booming, as the state-owned Rosatom sells its state-of-the-art civilian use reactors to power hungry friendly countries, especially in Africa. Russia is also home to the majority of the world’s uranium enriching capacity – the so-called yellow cake Ur235 isotope – used to fuel NPPs. Even the US remains dependent on importing Russian uranium and will do so until at least 2028.

At the same, the rogue North Korean regime has successfully built a bomb and is a potential source of military bomb-making technology for an unaligned power.

Ukraine and Iran not going to build the bomb soon

Nevertheless, the challenges to building a nuclear bomb are significant as the refining facilities needed are very large, expensive, time consuming to build and remain vulnerable to attack.

Ukraine currently does not have any nuclear fuel refining capacity at all and would struggle to bring online quickly in the time of war.

“In 2023, Ukraine had about 7.4 tonnes of Pu-239 sitting in 1,350 tonnes of spent fuel from the reactors it still controls and operates. Each year, Ukraine unloads ~40 tonnes of spent fuel, which would contain an additional ~200 kg of Pu-239,” Professor Lewis said in a thread on X.

The technical challenge Ukraine faces is to chemically separate its 7 tonnes of plutonium from the 1,350 tonnes of highly radioactive spent reactor fuel. China built a similar plant in 1993 to process 50 tonnes of spent fuel a year, but it took a decade to complete and cost $1bn to build. For Ukraine a similar facility, it would require substantial international help – help it is unlikely to be given the purpose of the plant.

“Russia would certainly attack the reprocessing plant during construction, unless Ukraine could keep the plant a secret. Ukraine might try to place the plant underground, but that would increase the time needed to construct the plant,” says Professor Lewis.

Iran is much further ahead of Ukraine and could in theory build a nuclear bomb relatively quickly. It has six heavily defended refining and research facilities but has held off from taking the last step for fear of the reaction that may provoke.

Iran’s key installations include:

• Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant: Iran's sole operational nuclear power reactor, contributing approximately 1.7% to the nation's total electricity generation as of 2023.
• Natanz Enrichment Facility: A central site for uranium enrichment, featuring extensive underground centrifuge operations.
• Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant: A fortified underground facility, originally intended for enrichment activities, now repurposed for research and production of stable isotopes.
• Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre: Engages in uranium conversion processes and the production of nuclear fuel components.
• Arak Heavy Water Reactor (Khondab): Initially designed as a heavy-water reactor, it has been undergoing modifications to limit plutonium production capabilities.
• Tehran Research Reactor: A research facility utilised for producing medical isotopes and conducting scientific studies.
• Uranium Mines and Milling Facilities: Iran operates several sites for uranium extraction and processing, supplying raw material for its nuclear activities.

Ukraine does not have the time or resources to run the facilities required to enrich uranium needed for high-yield nuclear weapons amid the ongoing war, but it could in theory quickly build a number of so-called “dirty bombs” – conventional bombs that spread radiation and make large areas uninhabitable for centuries.