Ukraine natural resources in Ukraine include iron ore, coal, manganese, natural gas, oil, salt, sulphur, graphite, titanium, magnesium, kaolin, nickel, mercury, timber and an abundance of arable land. Despite this, the country faces a number of major environmental issues such as inadequate supplies of potable water; air- and water-pollution and deforestation, as well as radiation contamination in the north-east from the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Recycling toxic household waste is still in its infancy in Ukraine. From northwest to southeast the soils of Ukraine may be divided into three major aggregations: As much as two-thirds of the
Nuclear weapons and Ukraine The study argues that the push for Ukrainian independence was with a view to make it a nonnuclear state. The United States would also not have made Ukraine an exception when it came to the denuclearization of other post-Soviet states such as Belarus and Kazakhstan. The deterrent value of the nuclear weapons in Ukraine was also questionable, as Ukraine would have had to spend 12 to 18 months to establish full operational control over the nuclear arsenal left by the Russians. The ICBMs also had a range of 5.000-10.000 km (initially targeting the United States), which meant that they could