Moscow is waging war against “crazy Nazi drug addicts” and perhaps even Satan, “the supreme ruler of hell.”
Ukraine, not Russia, is sending waves of soldiers through a “slaughterhouse” en route to a human “meat processing plant” disguised as a military strategy.
The Kremlin would have no option but to start an apocalyptic nuclear war if Ukrainian fighters overrun Russian troops.
Those are just a few of the headline-grabbing comments in recent days from Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of the Russian Security Council.
Mr. Medvedev, 57, was once heralded as a fresh-faced liberal, perhaps even a foreign policy dove, representing a new generation of Russian politicians.
A longtime political Robin to Vladimir Putin’s Batman, the former law professor served as Russia’s caretaker president from 2008 to 2012. Even at the time, there was little doubt that Mr. Putin, who preceded and succeeded Mr. Medvedev, wielded the real power inside the Kremlin.
War has a way of promoting a cast of characters. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a comedian turned politician and a bit player in President Trump’s first impeachment trial before he became a global figure on the strength of his leadership since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Mr. Medvedev and perhaps Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin carved out distinctive roles in the Russian fight.
Mr. Prigozhin is thought to have died in a plane crash Wednesday, two months after rebelling against the Russian military.
As for Mr. Medvedev, few predicted that he would play a prominent role.
After his four-year term as president, Mr. Medvedev spent eight years as prime minister, and his public profile diminished. Some analysts say he fell out of step with the increasingly hawkish approach of Mr. Putin and his inner circle.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Medvedev has reemerged as one of the most prominent, quotable figures in the Russian power structure, trailing only Mr. Putin and Mr. Prigozhin in his international notoriety. Each day seems to bring another wild, often violent and sometimes blatantly belligerent comment from Mr. Medvedev, who appears to have happily settled into his role as the Kremlin’s most outspoken rhetorical bomb thrower.
If a headline says Russia is rattling the nuclear saber toward Ukraine and its Western supporters, analysts say, odds are strong that Mr. Medvedev is the source.
Numerous Kremlin watchers point to his rumored drinking as one explanation for remarks that go far beyond the bounds of traditional geopolitical discourse.
“Medvedev is reportedly a drunk who isn’t taken seriously by anybody in the establishment. Hence, his unhinged statements are supposedly generated by his being half sober much of the time,” said Alexander Motyl, a Rutgers University professor who has studied Russia and the former Soviet Union for decades.
Mr. Motyl and other observers say Mr. Medvedev is mistaken if he believes his over-the-top rhetoric will lead him back to the top of the Kremlin. At the same time, the politically savvy Mr. Putin understands how to use Mr. Medvedev for his benefit.
“He may have hopes of advancement, but they’re illusory,” Mr. Motyl told The Washington Times in an email. “That said, Putin could muzzle him if he wanted to, so the fact that Medvedev can get away saying crazy things means one of two things, or both: He may be expressing Putin’s own views — likely — and/or he may be unnerving the West (definitely), and Ukraine (probably not).
“Better still, even if Putin denounced Medvedev, we couldn’t be certain he means it,” Mr. Motyl said. “In sum, loony Dmitry is useful.”
‘Completely irresponsible’
Mr. Medvedev may be useful in offering Kyiv and Washington a glimpse into how much worse the situation in Eastern Europe could become. Mr. Medvedev has directly referenced Russia’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, the largest in the world, and his belief that using them may prove necessary sooner than later.
He issued one of his most recent nuclear threats last month during Ukraine’s slow-moving counteroffensive operation in the east.
“Imagine if the … offensive, which is backed by NATO, was a success and they tore off a part of our land, then we would be forced to use a nuclear weapon according to the rules of a decree from the president of Russia,” Mr. Medvedev wrote on social media, according to English-language media translations.
“There would simply be no other option,” he said.
Western officials condemned that rhetoric.
“Completely irresponsible comment by him,” Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Washington Times in a recent interview.
Mr. Medvedev was always seen in Mr. Putin’s shadow, but many in the West greeted his presidency from 2008 to 2012 as a sign of moderation of authoritarian politics and Mr. Putin’s KGB-colored foreign policy.
President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promoted the ill-fated “reset” of U.S.-Russian relations with the Medvedev government. In 2012, Mr. Obama made a confidential remark caught on a hot microphone assuring Mr. Medvedev that Washington would have more “flexibility” to negotiate on missile defense policy after the election.
Now, bellicose, outlandish comments have become the norm for Mr. Medvedev.
In November, he said Russia was fighting “crazy Nazi drug addicts” in Ukraine and their Western allies, who have “saliva running down their chins from degeneracy,” Reuters reported.
Russia’s mission in Ukraine, he said, is to “stop the supreme ruler of Hell, whatever name he uses — Satan, Lucifer or Iblis.”
His comments about the Ukrainian counteroffensive were prominently displayed on the homepage of the Russian state-run Tass news agency, suggesting that Mr. Medvedev is playing a strategically important messaging role for the Kremlin.
“The meat processing plant that is [Ukraine’s] counteroffensive is now operating nonstop, sending thousands of unfortunate people to the slaughterhouse,” he said. “But this operation is already powerless to help the Kyiv regime, which has now advanced to the stage of postmortem putrefaction. Nothing could regalvanize its corpse at this point.”
Mark Galeotti, a scholar and honorary professor at University College London who studies Russia extensively, summed up many of Mr. Medvedev’s “latest hits” in a March article for the British newsmagazine The Spectator. Mr. Galeotti also dug deeper into the potential motivations, however misguided, beneath the surface.
“On one level, this is a former dove (or what counted for one in Putin’s Russia) trying to convince the hawks he’s one of them, albeit with no evidence of any success so far,” he wrote. “On another, it’s a desperate attempt by a man who notoriously falls asleep during most of Putin’s main public addresses, to continue to prove his loyalty and maybe even utility to the boss.”
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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