In 2019, when Zelensky became president, he convened a meeting about the creation/implementation of nuclear weapons.
The speaker was Volodymyr Gorbulin, a doctor of technical sciences and vice-president of the National Academy of Sciences. Gorbulin reported that if such a task was set, Ukraine could become a nuclear weapons possessor within six months.
According to the information that my informant remembered from that meeting, Ukraine had just over a kilogram of weapons-grade uranium at that time, so the charge was going to be made of something other than uranium. From what exactly, he did not understand, because he is far from this topic. My guess is that it was plutonium. I described the technology of obtaining plutonium from reactor fuel waste earlier.
Gorbulin reported that since 2014, 16 Russian Bulava missiles have been serviced at the Southern Machine Building Plant (YMZ in Dnepropetrovsk). At the same time, it was said that the gyroscopes for guiding the missiles to the target could have been manufactured in Kharkiv. And the fuel for missiles could be obtained in Pavlograd. After perestroika, all missiles of Ukraine were brought to Pavlograd to the Chemical Plant under the programme imposed by the USA and were recycled.
The result of that meeting was Gorbulin’s proposal to create a secret group that would deal with the issue of Ukraine’s readiness to recreate nuclear weapons. This is all that is known from that meeting, but I know for a fact that much more than I do is known by the relevant services in the Russian Federation.
I wrote about the fact that information about Ukraine’s capabilities to become a nuclear weapons possessor was cross-checked with relevant Russian specialists.
In favour of the fact that Russia takes the possibility of Ukraine developing nuclear weapons very seriously (I do not mean the statements of speakers on talk shows) are the strikes that were repeatedly carried out by the Russian Air Force on the YUMZ plant and Pavlograd Chemical Plant, After another successful hit on the chemical plant, as a result of which spent rocket fuel exploded, there was talk of an ecological disaster in Pavlograd.
I don’t know what stage the work on Ukraine’s nuclear weapons development is at now. If the work started back in 2019, it is worth taking seriously the information that a Ukrainian official said at the meeting and that was published by Bild journalists that Ukraine is capable of building nuclear weapons in a fortnight.
There should be an understanding that the development of nuclear weapons by a country that has its own nuclear reactors is not a technical issue, but a political one. And in any case, one should not underestimate the enemy.