[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 40 (Monday, March 3, 2025)]
[House]
[Page H940]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     A STAIN ON OUR NATION'S HONOR

  (Mr. FOSTER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. FOSTER. Mr. Speaker, at the time of Ukraine's independence from 
the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine held the third largest nuclear 
arsenal in the world.
  According to the Arms Control Association, this included 
approximately 1,900 strategic warheads, 176 intercontinental ballistic 
missiles, and 34 strategic bombers, an arsenal large enough to 
annihilate every person on Earth.
  By 1996, Ukraine had voluntarily given up that nuclear arsenal in 
exchange for written guarantees of territorial integrity, signed by 
America, Russia, England, and Europe. These were guarantees that were 
reconfirmed by Russia under Vladimir Putin in 2009.
  When JD Vance and Donald Trump stabbed Ukraine in the back in the 
Oval Office last Friday by ignorantly repudiating those security 
agreements and by failing to defend one of only two nations that has 
ever voluntarily given up its nuclear weapons, it forever raised the 
risk of an uncontrolled nuclear arms race and a nuclear holocaust. It 
put a stain on our Nation's honor that will take generations to remove.

                          ____________________