independence, ukraine ended up inheriting something that they very much did not want. they inherited a bunch of nukes. today, russia has the biggest stockpile of nuclear weapons on earth, but even in the soviet days, russia had a ton of nukes. and they kept a lot of them in ukraine. when the ussr collapsed, the left behind thousands of nuclear missiles in ukraine. what ukraine did with that inheritance was shocking. ukraine essentially raised its hand to catch the attention of the world and said, we do not want these nuclear weapons. so 1994, the u.s. president if we are to budapest essentially brokered deal with russia and ukraine along with the united kingdom. ukraine would agree to destroy its newfound nuclear arsenal in exchange for assurances from both the united states and russia than either country would ever use its own weaponry against ukraine.