18 December 1991
“Russia goes from bad to worse – Gorbachev is gone, or just about, and Yeltsin flexes his muscles. I wouldn’t trust him with my car keys. He declares one day that all [Soviet] nuclear bombs will be his, Russia’s. But the Kazakhstanis refuse, so where are we, where is the world. I suppose that, since the times of Genghis Khan, and in spite of all the Dostoievskian & Tolstoian soul-searching, Russia is the world’s biggest pain in the arse. One loves, then loathes them, and like children they once again slip into chaos and another winter of starvation of their own making.”
Mikhail Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union, and Boris Yeltsin president of Russia. Yeltsin had just agreed with his counterparts from Ukraine and Belarus to break up the Soviet Union, which was formalised on 26 December. This raised the question what would happen to all the Soviet nuclear weapons placed outside Russia. In the end it was agreed that all of them would be transferred to Russia, in return for non-aggression assurances – a pledge which Russia broke when it attacked Ukraine.