After the Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Why Did Only Russia Retain Nuclear Weapons?

Where Did the Massive Nuclear Legacy of the Soviet Union End Up?

On December 6, 1991, the Soviet Union, once powerful enough to contend with the United States, announced its dissolution, ending 70 years of its glorious history.

Apart from concerns about the imbalance of international power, people around the world couldn’t help but wonder: where did the massive legacy of the Soviet Union end up?

This is especially true for the tens of thousands of nuclear warheads in the Soviet nuclear arsenal — after all, this was a force potent enough to change the global geopolitical landscape!

As we see today, the military resources in the Soviet nuclear arsenal were largely inherited by Russia thereafter.

However, Russia was not the only country to inherit the Soviet nuclear weapons. Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus also received shares.

But why did these countries later become non-nuclear states? And why is Russia, which inherited most of the Soviet legacy, far less powerful than the Soviet Union once was?