MOSCA – The parable of the dove that became a hawk reached its peak with the latest post on Telegram. “I hate them. They are bastards and degenerates. They want Russia to die. As long as I am alive, I will do everything to make them disappear,” wrote the former Russian prime minister and president. Dmitry Medvedevnow vice-president of the Security Council, without specifying the purpose of his bellicose intemperate: whether the Westerners, the Ukrainians or the Russian “traitors” who oppose what Moscow calls a “special military operation”.
Since opening a Telegram profile on March 17, the 65-year-old former leader has emerged as one of the most relentless supporters of the “war party” opposed to any compromise with Kiev and one of the most rabid thunderbolts against the countries they have sanctioned. the Russia.
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From its virtual stage thunders fiery words threatening the use of nuclear weapons against the West or the return of the death penalty to its homeland now that Moscow has withdrawn from the Council of Europe and yesterday also from the European Court of Human Rights. An attempt to regain credit to the Kremlin Court to re-emerge from the political limbo into which it had been downgraded in the past two years or even to re-credit itself as a dolphin of Vladimir Putin. “Medvedev sails close to the wind,” commented the political analyst Andrej Pertsev. “He could go back to being a favorite for the presidency, the kind of hawk Putin could leave Russia to.”
And to say that his interlude in the Kremlin from 2008 to 2012 had given hope for a “Reset” of relations to the then administration Obama and in a more modern and liberal country to Russian voters. So much so that ten years ago thousands of Muscovites protested when, instead of running for a second term, they stepped aside to leave Putin’s chair again and become his obedient premier. Rokirovka, castling, was called the disputed exchange of roles by borrowing the lexicon of chess.
The first leader to have no ties to either the Communist Party or secret service siloviki, Deep Purple and iPhone fans, former lawyer Medvedev seemed like a more pro-Western and democratic alternative. In reality, as the US diplomats in Moscow clearly saw in some cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010, Medvedev and Putin were the two sides of the same coin, the two heads of a “two-headed power system” where Medvedev was “the Robin of Putin-Batman “. “Putin has the most cards, and the best, in the tandem relationship,” the ambassador said John Beyrle. Which the Kremlin leader also demonstrated when in 2020 he suddenly got rid of a Medvedev that had become ballast. Too ineffective and unpopular after the publication of the video investigation by Alexei Navalny on his immense patrimony collected with bribes. “He is not a Dimon”, shouted the Russians in the square who had opened their eyes after the mistake, mocking the diminutive of Dmitry. Since then the oblivion.
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The metamorphosis was not sudden. Already last October, in a comment on the newspaper Kommersanthad accused the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to be “loyal to the most ravenous nationalist forces” in what he called a “revolting moral somersault” for a Jew. Since then his writings have become increasingly virulent. As the perfect spokesperson for a Russia that does not forgive hesitation so much that yesterday even the metropolitan Hilarion was removed as head of External Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church. “He is desperate. He wants to survive, not to climb the top of the vertical”, says the political scientist Maria Snegovaja.
But there are also those who believe, like the political scientist Andrej Pertseev, which aims to regain the supreme role. A goal judged by many to be unrealistic because, in addition to unpopularity, Medvedev is paying for the wrong friends. From the former minister Alexey Ulyukaev to the billionaire brothers Magomedov, all his main allies have ended up behind bars. So much so that in the September parliamentarians, although he is the head of the ruling United Russia party, Medvedev was excluded by Putin himself as leader and candidate president of the Duma. But despite that humiliation “, like Robin, Medvedev has an ace that makes him precious in the eyes of” Batman “: his unconditional loyalty.
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