Ukraine Stops Moving Nuclear Arms to Russia

In an abrupt reversal of previous agreements on the fate of the former Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal, Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk said Thursday that he has stopped sending tactical weapons from his republic to Russia for dismantling.

“I have issued an order to suspend the removal of nuclear weapons until we can guarantee their destruction,” Kravchuk said. “Because of the chaos and uncertainty (in Russia), we cannot guarantee that, if we move these weapons, they will be destroyed and will not fall into evil hands.”

In a meeting of the leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States late last year, Kravchuk had agreed to transport Ukraine’s tactical nuclear weapons across the border to Russia for destruction.

His announcement Thursday is “a blatant contradiction of our existing agreements,” said Valentin V. Perfilyev, an adviser to Russian Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi. “It is not permissible to play political games with nuclear weapons--and this is exactly what Kravchuk is doing.”

Perfilyev accused Kravchuk of acting “dangerously,” using nuclear weapons to prove Ukraine’s independence, and said that the Russian government will react harshly.

But Kiev’s relations with Moscow were not the only international ties likely to suffer because of Kravchuk’s decision. Top officials of the United States, Britain, France and Germany had all warned Kravchuk against such action.

In Washington, a senior State Department official said the United States is concerned that the Russian-Ukrainian friction might affect Kiev’s promises to eliminate all nuclear weapons on its territory and to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear nation. “We don’t like disputes over nuclear weapons,” the official said.

Washington’s first concern, he explained, is to ensure that the weapons are destroyed. If that can be done in Ukraine, that would be acceptable. But Ukraine apparently lacks facilities to do the work, he added. “They had a plan to eliminate the nuclear weapons,” the official said. “We considered it a good plan. We were helping with it. (The Ukraine-Russia dispute) would seem to make it more difficult.”

Although Ukraine has repeatedly pledged to destroy all of its nuclear arsenal by 1994, Germany, in particular, has expressed concern that the Ukrainians will decide to keep some nuclear weapons--in addition to the more than 400,000 men the former Soviet republic has recruited for its armed forces.

Before the Soviet Union disintegrated, about one-third of its tactical nuclear weapons were in Ukraine. Kravchuk said last week that 57% of Ukraine’s tactical weapons had already been moved to Russia. He also contended that Russia’s facilities are “not sufficient to destroy all strategic weapons” by the deadlines.

He proposed that the United States and Europe help finance a Ukrainian facility to destroy them. “Ukraine considers that it has a moral right to have a factory to destroy nuclear weapons,” Kravchuk said.

He also called for foreign observers to monitor the withdrawal and dismantling of nuclear weapons in the former Soviet republics.

That announcement is expected to especially provoke the Russian government, because it was made not in an official communication to authorities in Russia but in answer to a question at a news conference marking Kravchuk’s first 100 days as Ukrainian president.

Kravchuk’s latest decision is clearly an attempt to assert his country’s independence and reject hundreds of years of domination by Russia. It is likely to complicate already tense relations between Russia and Ukraine. They already are disputing ownership of the Black Sea Fleet and whether the Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea with important ports and scenic resorts, will be part of Russia or of Ukraine.

In recent interviews, Kravchuk has criticized Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, saying he lacks the authority to negotiate nuclear arms cuts for the entire Commonwealth; Kravchuk has demanded that Ukraine join Russia in negotiating nuclear arms reductions. He has also repeatedly stressed fears that political instability in Russia could affect Ukraine or threaten the future of the Commonwealth.

His decision to keep nuclear arms in Ukraine also put into question Ukraine’s commitment to other pledges it has made as a member of the Commonwealth, the loose alliance that has taken the place of the Soviet Union.

The announcement came as anxieties heightened at home and abroad over the security of the vast nuclear arsenal of the former Soviet Union. An expert at a key research center warned in an article published Thursday that the security of nuclear weapons is imperiled by new threats posed by the turmoil prompted by the Soviet Union’s breakup.

“Technical security . . . has remained at the previous level,” said Gennady Novikov, security chief at Chelyabinsk-70, a closed city in the Urals that had been one of two main research centers for the Soviet nuclear arsenal for decades. “But security in the broad sense, taking into account the political and psychological situation, has certainly declined sharply.

“A few years ago, we had no concept of nuclear terrorism,” Novikov told the prestigious Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. “Now we speak about the possibility of deliberate seizure of nuclear munitions. A blackmailer could simply threaten to blow them up. This is a new trend for us. We always believed we had discipline and order.”

Times staff writer Shogren reported from Moscow, and Times special correspondent Mycio reported from Kiev. Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.