Arms Control Wonk doesn't always have a most amazing takes when it comes to world politics and tends to be very liberal, but they do know what they are talking about when it comes to nuclear arms and disarmament.

In this podcast episode they dispel the myth that Ukraine had nuclear weapons and gave them up. Quite a bit of detail on how these weapons were always in Russia's control and Ukraine never had a serious option of taking control of them.

I think this is an important criticism, because the media consistently get this wrong such as in the following articles:

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1082124528/ukraine-russia-putin-invasion

Three decades ago, the newly independent country of Ukraine was briefly the third-largest nuclear power in the world.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220205102419/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/05/science/ukraine-nuclear-weapons.html

At the end of the Cold War, the third largest nuclear power on earth was not Britain, France or China. It was Ukraine. The Soviet collapse, a slow-motion downfall that culminated in December 1991, resulted in the newly independent Ukraine inheriting roughly 5,000 nuclear arms that Moscow had stationed on its soil. Underground silos on its military bases held long-range missiles that carried up to 10 thermonuclear warheads, each far stronger than the bomb that leveled Hiroshima. Only Russia and the United States had more weapons.

Reuters heavily editorialized a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry by removing context and carefully selecting words to imply Russia wants a cold war. Reuters if often viewed as bias-free and factual by non Marxists.

Compare the following from Reuters:

Russia calls for return to 'peaceful co-existence' with U.S. like during Cold War -Interfax

March 8 (Reuters) - Russia and the United States should return to the principle of "peaceful co-existence" like during the Cold War, the Interfax news agency cited the Russian foreign ministry as saying on Tuesday.

The foreign ministry added that it was open to honest and mutually respectful dialogue with the United States and that hope remained that normalcy in relations between the two countries could be restored, Interfax reported.

To the original Interfax:

Moscow ready for dialogue with U.S., revival of principle of peaceful coexistence possible - Russian Foreign Ministry

MOSCOW. March 8 (Interfax) - Moscow is ready for an honest and mutually respectful dialogue with the United States and retains hope that relations with Washington, D.C., would return to normal, Alexander Darchiyev, director of the North America Department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, said.

"We are open for an honest and mutually respectful dialogue to the same extent as the U.S. will be ready for it. Perhaps, it would do well to remember the well-forgotten principle that worked during the Cold War, peaceful coexistence, despite the values and ideals separating us which must not be forced on each other," Darchiyev told Interfax.

"And the proverbial 'rule-based order' alongside the 'progressive' norms rejecting the traditional morals also must not be forced upon us," the diplomat said.

"If we proceed from this understanding of the basis of bilateral relations in light of Russia and the U.S.'s special responsibility for the fate of the world as nuclear superpowers, we retain hope that normalcy in relations between our countries will come back," he said.

"But it, of course, demands the reciprocal movement of both parties. I would like to reiterate that we are ready for such reciprocity," Darchiyev said.

Western media have been calling the Russian intervention in Ukraine unprovoked. This Fair.org article gives a good overview on how Western media consistently lets the US and NATO off the hook when it comes to excalating the situation.