Dmitry Medvedev has traveled a long way since her time as Russian president, when she once settled alongside then -US president Barack Obama, and stated that “the solution of many world problems depends on the joint will of the United States and Russia.”
This week, in his semiofficial Kremlin spokesman, Medvedev twice suggested that President Donald Trump’s administration was pushing the US and Russia to the war and warned of Russia’s nuclear abilities after Trump suggested that he would apply new sanctions to Russia.
Although Medvedev is the vice president of the Russian Security Council, he does not exercise any executive power. But your provocative comments this week still caused a sensation.
Medvedev said on Thursday on Telegram that Trump should imagine the apocalyptic television series The Walking Dead and referred to the Soviet capacity to launch automatic nuclear attacks.
The US President responded on Friday by ordering two nuclear submarines to move to “the appropriate regions.”
The dispute occurs after Trump established a new deadline for Putin to end the war in Ukraine, threatening with US sanctions if a ceasefire was not agreed-an ultimatum that Kremlin probably won’t attend.
Medvedev is a different figure today than when he became president of Russia at the age of 42. He was a lawyer without calls with security services, unlike current leader Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent. Fone with the internet – once again, unlike Putin – he was eager to modernize Russia’s economy and fight corruption.
But its presidency was seen as a provisional solution, a way of putting constitutional boundaries and maintaining power.
Since leaving the presidency in 2012 to allow Putin to return to office, Medvedev has become a relatively liberal technocrat into an ultranationalist, causing Russian opponents with provocative social networks.
Just compare what he said in an interview with CNN in 2009 – that Russia needed to “have good relationships developed with the West in every way of the word” – with this comment in May: “For Trump’s words about Putin ‘playing with fire’ and ‘really bad things’ happening to Russia. I only know something really bad – World War II. I hope Trump understands it!”
This change seems to have begun after its presidency, when Medvedev began to position himself in an effort to maintain the confidence of the United Russian ruler.
In 2012, he said to legislators, “They often tell me, ‘You’re a liberal.’ I can say with all the frankness: I never had liberal convictions.”
As president, Medvedev told CNN that “the level of corruption is categorically unacceptable.” But later, when he was a prime minister, he was the target of an investigation by the anti-corruption foundation of the oppositionist Alexei Navalny, who claimed that he had accumulated a “corruption empire” with luxurious properties, luxury yachts and vineyards throughout Russia.
Medvedev spokeswoman Natalya Timakova rejected the investigation, which quickly obtained 14 million youtube views, such as a “propagandistic explosion,” but Medvedev became the target of street protests.
In 2020, he abruptly resigned as Prime Minister when Putin began a constitutional reform to consolidate his power.
Since then, from his place on the Security Council, he has launched a series of xenophobic and offensive attacks against Ukrainians and Western leaders. Medvedev has 1.7 million subscribers on Telegram, as well as Russian and English accounts with a total of nearly 7 million followers.
After the large-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Medvedev referred to Kiev’s leadership as “cheap to reproduce in a vial.”
In a speech earlier this year, Medvedev presented an image that portrayed Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as Muppets and urged the “destruction of the Kiev’s Neoliani regime.”
He often evokes the spectrum of Nazism, stated this year that the new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz had “suggested an attack on the crime bridge. Think twice, Nazi!”
And he is not afraid of braking nuclear threats, stating in 2022 that “the idea of punishing a country that has one of the greatest nuclear abilities is absurd and represents a potential threat to the existence of humanity.”
Medvedev also delights with ad hominem attacks. Last month, he provoked Trump with a social media post warning: “Don’t follow the path of Sleepy Joe,” a reference to Trump’s own description of former President Joe Biden.
Despite his extravagant rhetoric, Medvedev has played a role in Kremlin messages, according to analysts.
The Institute for the Study of War states that it is used to “amplifying inflammatory rhetoric designed to feed panic and fear among Western decision makers” as part of “a concerted informative strategy imposed by Kremlin.”
But commentators say that it should not be interpreted literally.
Referring to this week’s discussions, Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, described both Medvedev’s statements and Trump’s answer as “pure theatricality.”
“Having avoided the use of nuclear weapons in the last three years, Russia obviously will not launch them in response to a new round of US sanctions,” Lieven said.
At that press conference with Obama in 2009, Medvedev was a confident and newly deposed president who saw himself as much more than a Putin replacement. He said that day, “We have the main nuclear arsenals and we have full responsibility for these arsenals.”
Sixteen years later, he has the freedom of the provocateur.
