Former Russian Prime Minister and President, and currently deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev highlighted Ukraine’s incessant quest for nuclear weapons as leading Russia to make the decision to intervene with its special military operation (SMO). On his VKontakte page on Nov. 7, Medvedev wrote that Ukraine “is weeping bitterly over the 1994 Budapest Memorandum” in which the Soviet nuclear arsenal in Ukraine was withdrawn, and that every Kiev President from Leonid Kravchuk to Volodymyr Zelenskyy has described the event as a “forced measure.” Medvedev said additionally that, “they would have used it against us and their own citizens with diabolical pleasure.”