Bandung Conference 1955
War is an ugly part of the human experience. Everything about it is hideous. War is most obviously the act of invasion and the brutality that goes along with its operations. No war is precise; every war hurts civilians. Each act of bombardment sends a neurological shudder through a society.
World War II demonstrated this ugliness in the Holocaust and in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From Hiroshima and the Holocaust rose two mighty movements, one for peace and against the perils of further nuclear attacks, and the other for an end to the divisions of humanity and for a nonalignment from these divisions. The Stockholm Appeal of 1950, signed by 300 million people, called for an absolute ban on nuclear weapons. Five years later, 29 countries from Africa and Asia, representing 54 percent of the world’s population, gathered in Bandung, Indonesia, to sign a 10-point pledge against war and for the “promotion of mutual interests and cooperation.” The Bandung Spirit was for peace and for nonalignment, for the peoples of the world to put their efforts into building a process to eradicate history’s burdens (illiteracy, ill health, hunger) by using their social wealth. Why spend money on nuclear weapons when money should be spent on classrooms and hospitals?
Despite the major gains of many of the new nations that had emerged out of colonialism, the overwhelming force of the older colonial powers prevented the Bandung Spirit from defining human history. Instead, the civilization of war prevailed. This civilization of war is revealed in the massive waste of human wealth in the production of armed forces—sufficient to destroy hundreds of planets—and the use of these armed forces as the first instinct to settle disputes. Since the 1950s, the battlefield of these ambitions has not been in Europe or in North America, but rather it has been in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—areas of the world where old colonial sensibilities believe that human life is less important. This international division of humanity—which says that a war in Yemen is normal, whereas a war in Ukraine is horrific—defines our time. There are 40 wars taking place across the globe; there needs to be political will to fight to end each of these, not just those that are taking place within Europe. The Ukrainian flag is ubiquitous in the West; what are the colors of the Yemeni flag, of the Saharawi flag, and of the Somali flag?
Indeed! The sentiment in the last sentence of the 2nd pqragraph has guided my political life for over 60 years. Meaningful as ever. “Why spend money on nuclear weapons when money should be spent on classrooms and hospitals?”
Eideard 
“If you have nuclear weapons, people don’t invade you.” Pavlo Rizanenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament (USA TODAY March 10, 2014) https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/03/10/ukraine-nuclear/6250815/
After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 and became Russia, the newly independent nation of Ukraine became the world’s third largest nuclear weapons power.
World powers urged Ukraine to give up the arsenal but its leaders balked, expressing fear they needed the weapons to deter Russia from trying to reverse Ukraine’s independence.
To reassure the Ukrainians, the United States and leaders of the United Kingdom and Russia signed in 1994 the “Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances” in which the signatories promised that none of them would threaten or use force to alter the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine in exchange for it giving up its nuclear arsenal.
Despite Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which the UN General Assembly rejected as invalid, the Government of Ukraine in 2014 reaffirmed its 1994 decision to accede to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear-weapon state.
At the time Russian President Vladimir Putin said the commitments in the 1994 agreement were not relevant to Crimea because a “coup” in Kiev created “a new state with which we have signed no binding agreements.” (IE: the overthrow of President Yanukovych and the Arazov government).
On February 24, 2022, Putin invaded Ukraine and began his war of extermination with the justification that the modern, Western-leaning country was a constant threat and Russia could not feel “safe, develop and exist” …and that it was necessary to “demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine”, to protect people subjected to eight years of bullying and genocide by Ukraine’s government.
See also “Libya’s nuclear disarmament : lessons and implications for nuclear proliferation”. Norman Cigar, U.S. Marine Corps University (January 2, 2012). https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/MES/Monographs/MESM%202%20JAN%202012_lo.pdf?ver=2018-10-03-103833-280
“After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine held about one third of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, the third largest in the world at the time, as well as significant means of its design and production. 130 UR-100N intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) with six warheads each, 46 RT-23 Molodets ICBMs with ten warheads apiece, as well as 33 heavy bombers, totaling approximately 1,700 warheads remained on Ukrainian territory. Formally, these weapons were controlled by the Commonwealth of Independent States. In 1994, Ukraine agreed to destroy the weapons, and to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction