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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?
What would the Russian reaction to this be? Would Russia sit around idly while a neighbour with a hostile government nuclearizes? Or would they go in hard and pre-empt nuclearization? One of Zelensky's many bizarre pre-war diplomatic maneuvers was making strange threats about nuclearization. Big nuclear powers tend to get hysterical when hostile neighbours nuclearize or are nuclearized. See the Cuban Missile Crisis for example. The US was hours away from launching a disarming strike on Cuba, they were dropping dummy depth charges on Russian submarines.
Furthermore, the Ukraine war is if anything much less a war of conquest than our Middle East wars. Ukraine is full of Russians and Russian speakers. The commander of the Ukrainian army is Russian, Russian family, educated in Moscow. A significant number of the forces Russia has were drawn from Donetsk and Luhansk which were provinces of Ukraine. Many of the territories in question were part of Novorossiya: Catherine the Great founded Dnipropetrovsk, for instance. Both sides appeal to common historical concepts, calling each other Nazis. The majority of fighting is conventional, between uniformed soldiers.
In Iraq and Afghanistan there was a much clearer division between 'us' and 'them'. Nobody ever found any historical claim for the US to be involved in running Afghanistan or Iraq, such an idea is ludicrous. They're on the other side of the world! The wars were justified via broader universal liberal principles, the need to reshape the Middle East...
At no point was the commander of the Taliban American or British, it was a war between Muslim Afghans/Arabs vs secular European/Americans. There were some auxiliaries drawn from the locals but these proved to be extremely low-quality troops and caused considerable green-on-blue attacks. Western-trained auxiliaries usually disintegrated the moment they ran into any motivated local force (like the Taliban or ISIS) without Western backup. The local population was not really aligned with Western forces and much of the fighting was unconventional with guerrilla tactics and suicide bombings. There was a massive ideological clash in all respects, the forces of Islam vs the forces of secular liberal democracy.
If an alien race shows up and conquers the world, installing strange values like mandatory veganism and bestiality, that's a war of conquest. They can't say 'oh we're just installing a new regime not conquering anything!' when they have no legitimate claim to Earth and only a bunch of perverts and weirdoes collaborating for them.
My point is that we should not conclude that because Russia invaded Ukraine, they will also try and invade Poland or Sweden or Azerbaijan. Ukraine-Russia is a special case where there are a wide range of justifications for Russia beyond 'Russia must grow larger'. The naval base in Crimea, the Novorussia territories, laws regarding the Russian language, potential NATO expansion...
Nor should the rules-based order be held up as this golden age because there was no conquest. The 'rules-based order' directly led to the situation today. Putin has complained repeatedly about the invasion of Iraq, various unilateral actions from the West. China wasn't keen on it either. What were the rules of the rules based order, are they listed anywhere? If we lack the strength to enforce the 'only we can invade countries' equilibrium because we abused it (and failed to even reap any gains from abusing it), then it's time to abandon it and move on without any nostalgia. Rebuilding this equilibrium is not desirable! Lessons must sink in.
They might, however, try to invade the Baltics, which seems to be the much more common claim.
What are the gains from invading the Baltics relative to the risks? It doesn't make sense from Russia's perspective unless NATO dissolves. The botched handling of the Russia-Ukraine war seems to have done a lot of damage to NATO unity but NATO isn't totally broken right now.
Fears about the Baltics from Ukraine are rehashed domino syndrome that makes even less sense.
NATO is, in fact, larger than it was at the start of the war.
And substantially less militarily equipped. Vast sums of arms and ammunition (and plenty of "trainers") were sent to Ukraine to be destroyed or sold on the black market. Sure, there are more nations in NATO, but the USA is making loud noises about leaving and the military investment just isn't there. NATO being larger doesn't even rise to the level of a refutation of RandomRanger's point - bigger is not always better.
I mean one of Russia's stated aims, halting NATO expansion at its borders, has resoundingly failed.
Those NATO arms also erased vast quantities of Russian invaders and their hardware, making Russia even less of a threat to NATO than they were before the war. I do agree with RandomRanger that Russia is unlikely to try invading the Baltics. Not because they don't want to, but because we and they now know they're completely incapable of such a feat.
It is generally agreed that the Russian army is stronger than it was before the war started. A lot of the corruption and dead weight was forcibly cleaned out by actual combat, and they've made multiple advances in weapon technology in the same timeframe. Their missile technology has advanced to the point that it is superior to NATO technology (there's no NATO equivalent to the Oreshnik) and their soldiers have substantially more experience on modern battlefields than NATO troops, and against NATO weaponry to boot. Even on the manufacturing side, they're producing substantially more shells and ammunition than NATO is, especially if you include all their other allies. If Russia wanted to invade and take over the entirety of Western Europe the only way to stop them would be nuclear. Have you seen the pathetic size and readiness of most NATO militaries?
Before we engage in fantasies of mighty Russian army reaching the English channel like the last three years never happened, how long would you estimate it would take them to reach Zaporizhzhia & Odessa, let alone Lviv?
The current situation is the equivalent of the entire US army being halted in Tijuana during an attempted invasion of Mexico (and indeed, having to fight the Mexicans in Arizona two years into the war).
All of Russia's "superpower" credentials are gone.
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