Re: That was my thought, too.
"Zelensky said Ukraine was going to become a nuclear power" I have my doubts about an Ukrainian president venting similar concepts in public settings, officially. Do you mind producing a quote?
Not at all-
https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/vistup-prezidenta-ukrayini-na-58-j-myunhenskij-konferenciyi-72997
Ukraine has received security guarantees for abandoning the world's third nuclear capability. We don't have that weapon. We also have no security...
... I am initiating consultations in the framework of the Budapest Memorandum. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was commissioned to convene them. If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt.
The Budapest Memorandum being the 'agreement' under which Ukraine surrendered the nuclear weapons it inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
About shelling Donetsk area, please do not forget Soviet barraks and military installations were built within cities, easy to blow up some residential building.
Not sure exactly what you're referring to but the OSCE regularly reported breaches of the Minsk deal by both sides, and indiscriminate shelling from both sides. That theme has continued, ie hotels and apartment buildings have been struct either by falling air defence missiles, or intentionally when they've been used as barracks. Remember, the first casualty of war is the truth, and both sides have been lieing.
And, and, and... have someone the idea of how much weapons, materiel, nukes did Ukraine give back to Moskow, and how much light weaponry went the way it did in Caucasus, sold by the upper ground to the underground?
The stuff given back or sold under the Budapest Memorandum is pretty well documented. The thousands of tonnes of other weapons post-USSR, much less so. But you're right that a lot of this was sold off by corrupt people. My favorite example was this one-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Faina
The ship was allegedly heading to Mombasa, Kenya, from Ukraine with 33 Soviet-made T-72 tanks, weapons (including rocket-propelled grenades and anti-aircraft guns)[6] and ammunition on board, when it was seized
Which were destined for S.Sudan and their civil war. Given under Soviet/Warsaw Pact planning, Ukraine was intended to have been a bastion protecting Russia, it had huge stockpiles of weapons stored, a lot of which were in old mine caverns in Donbas. Hence why when Ukraine's civil war started, the Donbas seperatists had access to a LOT of 'Russian' equipment. Western propagandists ignored those facts and instead tried to convince everyone they came from Russia.. which contained some truth, ie they may have done originally. Same with some of the claims about modernised 'Russian' tanks, like T-80 variants. Which kind of ignored this place in Kharkiv-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malyshev_Factory
It produces diesel engines, farm machinery, coal mining, sugar refining, and wind farm equipment, but is best known for its production of Soviet tanks, including the BT tank series of fast tanks, the famous T-34 of the Second World War, the Cold War T-64 and T-80, and their modern Ukrainian successor, the T-84.
But that's also one of the tragedies behind the 2014 coup, and the pivot towards the EU. It lost all the trade it had with Russia, which was most of Ukraine's trade.