My father, a Soviet-born Ukrainian army officer, succumbed to brain cancer 24 years ago at an impossibly young age. A medical report produced by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in January 1996 cites his longstanding occupational exposure to ionizing radiation and indeed he had been involved in nuclear weapons handling and maintenance. In May 1996, two years before his death, the last of Ukraine’s nuclear arms was brought to Russia as part of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, by which the newly established republic chose nuclear disarmament in exchange for security assurances from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Russia.
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