Medvedev is seeing things again

Translation of Medvedev's post by Ilya Lozovosky

My comment

I wrote an article for the Cosmopolitan Globalists, What the Hell is Putin Doing?, back in November 2021. Based on a variety of documents, assessments, and the propaganda campaign the Kremlin was unleashing on the west and at home, I had concluded that Putin had an imperialist design and that he would wage war.

I read the article below yesterday about Dmitry Medvedev, the former President of Russia and now deputy head of Russia’s security council, and like the author, Shaun Walker, sat and wondered why Medvedev had become such a hawk. Is he vying for Putin’s position and trying to show loyalty to the war party in the Kremlin?

Walker, ‘I hate them’: Dmitry Medvedev’s journey from liberal to anti-western hawk

Maria Pevchikh, an associate of the imprisoned Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, interpreted Medvedev’s shift in more personal terms: “When you feel you are a pointless and pathetic person, like Dmitry Medvedev, you try to reinvent yourself from time to time. He could have shaved his head, or gone to the gym … but instead he decided to reinvent himself as a hawk,” she said, in a video discussion devoted to Medvedev’s strange behaviour in May.

Medvedev has been posting aggressive and violent messages since March 17 when he created his Telegram profile. He’s since written anti-democratic, anti-Western and anti-NATO narratives. His language is unusually crude and abusive.

On the morning of June 7, Dmitry Medvedev explained:

I’m often asked why my Telegram posts are so harsh. The answer is I hate them. They are bastards and scum.”

“They want death to us, Russia,” Medvedev wrote, adding that “as long as I’m alive, I will do everything to make them disappear.”

After prime minister Boris Johnson and prime minister Mario Draghi were forced out of office, he posted this meme, a clear threat message to European leaders.

Maps of the future Russian empire

On July 29, Medvedev published two maps of Europe, one where Ukraine is divided into parts, with the biggest one belonging to Russia, and smaller ones to Poland and Romania. On this map, only Kyiv Oblast is labeled as Ukraine.

Medvedev made an unsupported claim that this map was created by some Western analysts, but he did not name them.

And today he posted a note on Telegram, which was taken down almost immediately. We don’t know why. It could have been posted at the wrong time or wasn’t to Putin’s liking for some reason.

It’s certainly not the first time posts and articles have been removed from Russian media and personal accounts. You may recall just after February 24, an article was removed from RIA Novosti because it talked about the successful capitulation of the Ukrainian forces in Kyiv (not).

Ilya Lozovsky has provided a translation of the post.

Note from Ilya Lozovsky

I did a quick and dirty translation of the hyper-nationalistic screed that was posted by Dmitry Medvedev's VK account a few hours ago, and then quickly removed. His spokesman says the account was hacked, and that he didn't write it.

That doesn't sound very plausible to me. Russian social networks are all joking that it was a drunk post. But who knows? If it wasn't a hack, it's hard to understand what the point was. A signal to hardline nationalists?

A 'cry of the soul' that was regretted as having gone too far? Or was ordered taken down? Who knows what's going on anymore. My translation is in the rest of the thread. I did it real quick, so apologies for any errors. It's quite poorly written so I did a bit of cleanup.

Medvedev’s post

No one should have any doubt that the deadly mistake that took place in the early 90s will be corrected. Тhere will never again be any parade of sovereignties [a reference to Soviet republics pushing for autonomy in the late 80s-early 90s] and all the peoples who once lived in the great and mighty Soviet Union will once again live in friendship and mutual understanding.

For this we will spare no strength or resources. And we’ve already started moving down this path.

After the liberation of Kiev and all the territories of Malorossia from the band of nationalists, who are preaching a Ukrainian-ness they invented, Rus will once again become united, mighty, and invincible, like it was a thousand years ago during the time of the ancient Russian state [a.k.a. the Kievan Rus, lol].

After this, under the unified hand of Moscow, headed by the slavic people, we will go on the next campaign [can also be translated as ‘crusade’] to reestablish the boundaries of our Motherland which, as is known, don’t end anywhere.

All the lands taken from us were covered in the blood of our ancestors and conquered in many battles over centuries. And we won’t give them up to anyone.

For example, until the joining of Georgia [to the Russian empire], it didn’t exist at all. In 1801 the territory of contemporary Georgia consisted of five sovereign political units: Kartli and Kakhetia with a capital in Tiflis Imereti with a capital in Kutaisi, two principalities — Mingrelia and Guria — on the Black sea coast, and the principality of Svaneti in the mountainous regions.

That is, Georgia was created in its present boundaries only within the Russian empire.

Georgia was drawn to Russia because it understood: Russia was its only ally in its fairly hostile surroundings of Muslim countries. And now the same story is repeating. North and South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and the remaining territory of Georgia can be united only as part of a single government, with Russia.

Another historical example: In the early 17th century, the Russians founded the first settlements in the wild lands of northern Kazakhstan. Over three centuries the process of colonization of this territory by Russians continued the main drivers of this were the opening of the Siberian railroad and Stolypin’s agrarian reforms. Until the fall of the Soviet Union, 62.5% of the population of northern Kazakhstan were Slavs.

Kazahkstan is an artificial government, [consisting of] former Russian territories. For example the cities of Guriev and Semipalatinsk. Even Alma-Ata until 1924 was called Verniy. In the current century, the Kazakh authorities have begun to realize initiatives to resettle various ethnic groups within the republic, which can be described as a genocide of Russians. And we won’t close our eyes to this. Until the Russians come there, there will be no order.

A slew of hawkish Russian tankies and geopolitical theorists have written about the future formation of the Russian empire, so Medvedev isn’t the first. He’s simply known to Western audiences and makes more of a splash.

Is this the Kremlin’s thinking at the moment? We don’t know but we do know that Putin is bent on expanding his empire and for the time being, he’s waging a genocial war against Ukraine and Ukrainians.