Speaking at the Munich Conference on International Security on February 19, 2022, President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelenskiy threatened to invalidate the Budapest Memorandum unless security guarantees were provided to Kyiv. Under the diplomatic wording of the refusal of the “package decisions of 1994,” Zelenskiy, in particular, meant the possibility of revising Ukraine's accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as a non-nuclear state. After 2014, many Ukrainian politicians, journalists, and public figures made statements in a similar vein. The Ukrainian elite is convinced that if Ukraine had retained its nuclear potential, it would have avoided “Russian aggression”. Such a linear perception does not give a complete picture of how and under what conditions Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons, to what extent the existing potential corresponded to the goal of deterring Russia, and to what extent Ukraine would be ready to maintain a nuclear potential on its territory.