We have already seen that fifteen independent countries were formed after the U.S.S.R. ceased to exist. They are: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Russia is internationally recognised as the successor of the U.S.S.R.
The first to declare independence were Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, during March-May, 1990. Among the countries that sprouted from the Soviet Union, Ukraine is getting the most attention these days because of the Russian invasion. Ukraine officially became an independent state on August 24, 1991, with Leonid Kravchuk as the first president. Ukraine gave up all the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the Soviet Union, and declared itself a non-nuclear nation on June 1, 1996.
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