In a post in late July, Medvedev described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as under the influence of “psychoactive substances.” In another, he said that American democracy was more than the totalitarian dystopia described in “Animal Farm,” George Orwell’s famous novel. Dmitry Medvedev at the forum “Entrepreneurship in the New Economic Reality” in Moscow on May 26. (Yekaterina Shtukina/Sputnik via AP) “If someone does not agree, they will deprive him of rations, crush him or send him to the slaughterhouse,” Medvedev wrote. In the same post, he accused the Americans (and their British lackeys) of promoting their exceptionalism with “Nazi glee”. It all amounts to what Russia scholar and podcaster Mark Galleoti calls “hysterical aggression” aimed at raising Medvedev’s profile among the siloviki (loosely, “hardliners”) around President Vladimir Putin. “I think he thinks he has to overcompensate and sound even more disturbed than they are,” Galleoti told Yahoo News. “And, because people are people and therefore prone to self-righteousness, he can even make himself believe it.” At the very least, Medvedev seems aware that his new persona comes across as a mismatch – a fact that doesn’t seem to bother him. “People often ask me why my Telegram posts are so harsh,” he wrote in June, in an apparent response to his critics. “The answer is that I hate them. They are bastards and scum.” In a recent post on VKontakte, another social media network popular with Russians, Medvedev suggested the Kremlin had plans for Georgia and Kazakhstan, both former Soviet republics like Ukraine. “All nations inhabiting the once great and mighty Soviet Union will once again live together in friendship and understanding,” Medvedev wrote, promising that the “mistake of the early 1990s” — namely, the dissolution of the USSR — “will be corrected . “ The story continues The post was quickly deleted, with Medvedev claiming he had been hacked, but the incident added to the litany of absurd ahistorical claims and exaggerated threats that have troubled observers who remember the once lovable Medvedev as a pro-Western moderate. much more approachable than Putin, who served as both his predecessor and successor in the Kremlin. Lately, Medvedev seems intent on emulating Putin’s belligerence – perhaps in the hope of eventually replacing him. The performance has left many in the West stunned, given how unlikely that effort is to succeed – and how much it has cost Medvedev, who once worked with Western elites at Davos, in global fame. “He’s opportunistically trying to redefine himself. And what he’s actually done is become a kind of vanguard for some of the more extreme views and narratives in the Kremlin, making them mainstream,” Russia expert Samuel Ramani told Yahoo News. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev before a meeting with members of the government in Moscow on January 15, 2020. (Dmitry Astakhov/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images) According to Nina Khrushcheva, an international affairs expert at the New School, Medvedev does not have the clout or the smarts to outwit Kremlin rivals for power such as security chief Nikolai Patrushev or Sergei Kiriyenko. But even if he never rules Russia again, Medvedev’s displays of zeal for the Ukraine war may be necessary to avoid becoming irrelevant, an unthinkable proposition for someone whose life has been so closely tied to his nationalist agenda. Putin. “He may be saying all this to assure himself that he will not be eliminated for infidelity,” he wrote to Yahoo News in an email. Whatever the case, Medvedev is making his views known in what amounts to a disturbing exercise in geopolitical rebranding. “Even by the standards of the Putin regime, this man is clearly independent,” European diplomat Carl Bildt tweeted after Medvedev warned of possible nuclear war if the International Criminal Court took action against Russia for alleged atrocities on the battlefield. . “The Fall and Fall of Dmitry Medvedev,” was a recent headline in Foreign Policy, reflecting deep disillusionment with a man who once invested in Western hopes for reform—hopes that, today, seem little more than fantasy. Thirteen years earlier, the same newspaper had described him as “the leader of Russia”. A trained lawyer, Medvedev is, like Putin, a native of St. Petersburg. The two met in 1990, with Medvedev serving as an adviser to Putin as he rose through the ranks of Russian power. Medvedev ascended with him, coming to serve as Russia’s president between 2008 and 2012, a period that would allow Putin to return as Russia’s leader after a constitutional hiatus. (In 2020, Putin changed the Russian Constitution to allow himself to effectively serve in perpetuity.) During his time as Russia’s leader, Medvedev never became the reformer some in the West expected, although he did fall out with Putin over offering support to Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi. And in a foreshadowing of his Telegram habits, Medvedev was criticized in 2011 for retweeting a message likening a political opponent to a “stupid mouth-whining sheep.” The Kremlin blamed the retweet on a low-level technical support employee, and the obscene post was deleted amid the controversy. The target of this message was Alexander Navalny, who at the time emerged as the leading critic of what Russia had become under Putin. In 2017, Navalny released a 40-minute documentary alleging that Medvedev had engaged in corruption on a staggering scale. While corruption was far from uncommon among the nation’s political and business leaders, Medvedev was the country’s prime minister, who had tried—albeit unsuccessfully—to present a friendly image to the West. “He has huge plots of land in the most elite areas. manages yachts, apartments in old mansions, agricultural complexes and wineries in Russia and abroad,” Navalny wrote in an accompanying report. “All this property was bought with bribes from oligarchs and loans from state banks.” Alexander Navalny and a Medvedev insert in a still from Navalny’s documentary. (Via YouTube) In early 2020, Medvedev resigned as Prime Minister of Russia in what was widely seen as a demotion precipitated by Putin’s loss of confidence. He was appointed to the Security Council, the position he held two years later when Russia decided to invade Ukraine. Here Medvedev saw his chance. With Russia increasingly isolated, he took to Telegram to support the invasion of Ukraine — and more. “The West’s frenzied Russophobia will apparently never bottom out,” he wrote in his first message, published on March 17, as Russia’s initial offensive ground stalled and the generals and janissaries around Putin looked for someone to blame. If anything, Medvedev had an answer and was willing to share it. Four days later, in a post viewed some 938,000 times, Medvedev called Poland’s leaders “political idiots” for siding with the West against Ukraine. The post sparked concerns of a wider conflict in Eastern Europe, as Poland had become the epicenter of refugees fleeing Ukraine and Western arms flowing to the front. Any attack on NATO member Poland would thus trigger the kind of continent-wide war that some had feared from the start. “We should take it seriously,” Ukraine expert Alina Polyakova, head of the Center for European Policy Analysis, said of Medvedev’s alarming message. In April, he mockingly contrasted the green energy pledges made by Western nations with concerns raised by sanctions against Russian gas and oil: “I think the day is not far off when a smiling Greta Thunberg will appear in Europe in ads for American gas stations. ,” Medvedev wrote, adding a smiley face emoji for emphasis. Critics have long accused Medvedev of drinking too much, and there have been other allegations about his personal life. Still, he seems determined to restore his image with Putin. Whether he can do it and climb back into the Kremlin is another matter. “I don’t think Medvedev seriously imagines he has another shot at the presidency,” says Galeotti, whose “In Moscow’s Shadows” podcast often delves into Kremlin intrigue. “I think he’s trying desperately to cling to some relevance.” As any social media user knows, an online challenge is one way to get attention — and Medvedev certainly seems to be an expert at it. In a post in June, he referred to Ukraine’s demand for an energy lend-lease program that would run until fall 2023 to help cushion the impact of sanctions on Russian oil and gas. “But who said,” he thought, “that there will be a Ukraine in two years on a map of the world?” The message garnered 2.9 million views.
