One of the reasons for conducting the “special military operation” was the “threats” by Ukrainian leaders that hinted resumption of the nuclear program, which Kyiv relinquished under the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, Dmitry Medvedev, who currently serves as the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, wrote in a message on the country’s VK social network, according to TASS.
“What do we see in contrast next to our own borders? Poor puppets from an inferior state, now weeping bitterly about the decision taken under the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 to withdraw the nuclear arsenal located on their territory and inherited from the USSR,” Medvedev said, following statements describing South Africa’s accession process to the Nonproliferation Treaty.
Later, Medvedev said that Ukrainians always perceived Kyiv’s accession to the international treaty as a forced step decided “under harsh pressure from Washington,” adding that this was the case even though Ukraine “did not have the means to support the ‘might’ (nuclear weapons) that had fallen to it by chance.”
He further said Ukrainian leaders, from former President Leonid Kravchuk to current President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have expressed that “they would be happy to use it (nuclear weapons) against us (Russia) and their own citizens (Ukrainians).”
RHM/PR
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