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In 1994, Ukraine, Russia, the UK and the US signed the Budapest Memorandum. The short version is that Ukraine destroyed its Soviet nukes, and in return, the signatories pledged to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine and support actions in the Security Council if it should ever be threatened by nukes.
In 1994, this seemed like a good deal. The cold war was over, Ukraine likely did have more urgent spending priorities than a nuclear weapon program and the rest of the world, both the nuclear powers and the others were glad to keep the number of nuclear powers limited. Wars of conquest seemed a thing of the past. While the US engaged in some regime change operations (most of which turned out rather terrible, tbh), in the 1990s the idea to expand your territory through war seemed basically dead.
The rule-based world order was a higher, better equilibrium, just like most people would prefer to live in a country where weapons of war are controlled only by a small group of mostly decent people to living in some failed state where many people carry an assault weapon for the simple reason that many other people carry an assault weapon.
Putin's invasion made some serious cracks in that vision of a rule-based world order (which was always perceived to be strong in Europe), but Trump II basically broke it. Under Trump, the US can not be relied to punish defectors from the rule based system, and might not even relied to provide nuclear retaliation for nuclear attacks on NATO members.
The best time for Ukraine to restart their nuclear weapons program would have been when Russia defected from the Budapest Memorandum by annexing Crimea in 2014, before Russia was ready for a full scale invasion. I think it would have been technically feasible. An experienced Soviet nuclear weapons engineer who was 40 in 1990 would have been 64 in 2014. Ukraine also runs a lot of civilian nuclear reactor and has its own Uranium deposits (which would come in handy once they quit the NPT, because this might make acquiring fuel on the world market difficult). WP claims they even have enrichment plants.
In general, figuring out how to make nuclear weapons is something which took a good fraction of the world's geniuses in the 1940s, but has become much simpler since then. Getting an implosion device to work just right is something which would likely be helped a lot by high speed cameras and microelectronics, and a few decades of Moore's law likely makes a hell of a difference for simulations. Delivery systems might be a bit harder, but at the end of the day you don't need 100% reliability for deterrence to work. Even if your enemy is 50% confident that they can intercept the delivery, that still leaves the expected outcome of a nuclear exchange highly negative for them. Attacking a launch site -- conventionally or otherwise -- is forcing your enemy to either use or lose his nukes, and few think it wise to do so.
On a more personal note, I really hate nuclear weapons, and very much prefer the rule-based world order. I very much preferred the 2010s when Putin was mostly known for riding topless, as well as the odd murder of a journalist or dissident, the US was fine playing world police (which included some ill-advised military adventures, but also providing nuclear deterrence for NATO) and I was comfortably regarding nukes, NATO and large scale wars with the same distant horror I might have for medieval healthcare.
Even besides Ukraine, in the future Europe can not rely on the US for defense, and the UK and France arsenals might not be judged sufficient for deterrence, and some EU nuke might be called for. I am not sure how it would work. Classical EU commission manner, where 27 member states have to push the launch button and Orban can veto if he feels like it? Or give Mrs van-der-Leyen launch authority? Or simply have a common weapon program and distribute the spoils to 27 members?
In practice, nuclear weapons have some tactical uses, but as a strategic weapon they have one use and one use only- forcing an enemy already defeated on the battlefield into harsher surrender terms than he would have otherwise agreed to without a costly invasion. They also have some value as a deterrent etc, but this is a standoff effect between peers. A world where Germany, Poland, Turkey, etc have nukes is a world not appreciably different from ours. The nuclear taboo would be developed regardless for the same reason great powers happily use land mines and cluster munitions but won't use chemical weapons.
I'd also like to point out that America's withdrawal from the world police role was in the cards already; China's economic strength finally gave us a peer competitor(which we hadn't had since some time in the late eighties), middle eastern fuckups gave middle powers a sandbox to play in, and the EU was always exploitably decentralized in a way which would make US hegemony fray. Like seriously Turkish ventures in Syria aren't because of the US abdicating its responsibility- rather the opposite.
In practice, no one knows.
On both sides of iron curtain, thousands of books were written about tactics and strategy of nuclear warfare, but it is all, so far, only theory. It would not be surprising if real WWIII proves all of it as useful as was pre-1914 military science shown useful in WWI.
Maybe with the advent of high-quality cameras being at hand for every civilian and soldier, the reduction of the 'fog of war' would permit the use of tactical nuclear weapons insomuch is that it is clear that the target is military formations and not indiscriminately nuking enemy cities.
Still, probably the grimmest prospect imaginable.
It is interesting that even pre-9/11 but after 1991 a huge proportion of geopolitical and nuclear risk analysts / researchers considered it pretty much 100% inevitable that terrorists would get their hands on some lost Soviet nukes by 2000 at the latest.
Spooks at the time took the threat seriously and special groups, task forces and laws were setup to make sure that the Soviet Collapse didn't see the legit attempts by various terrorist organizations to get nuclear capabilities succeed.
But the whole idea of a ragtag group getting access to the ultimate weapon was so fascinating that basically any work of fiction relating to espionnage of the time features it from Rogue Spear to Metal Gear Solid to Wag the Dog.
I'm not sure what to make of the fact that it didn't happen. Did the spooks just do their job well or was the threat exaggerated? It's hard to know.
Also The Peacemaker and Sum Of All Fears.
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