Russia's dad-dancing chief blowhard makes Putin look reasonable

Telegraph

14 hours ago

When Russia's war with Ukraine began, Dmitry Medvedev found himself in an awkward position.
In the grand sphere of Russian politics, the former president was best known for his efforts to seek warmer relations with the West, putting his signature on a 2010 treaty to reduce Russia's nuclear arsenal and completing its entry into the World Trade Organisation.
That put him out of step with the modern Kremlin, and potentially exposed to danger. By then, a decade after he stepped down as president, his authority had waned to the point of non-existence and key members of his inner circle had been arrested. So, Russian analysts say, the 59-year-old launched his makeover into the Kremlin's chief blowhard whose constant threats of nuclear war last week provoked Donald Trump to bite back, repositioning two nuclear submarines.
It marks a radical transition from the mild-mannered, iPad-loving technocrat who rubbed shoulders with Western leaders at G8 summits and visited Silicon Valley. In power from 2008 to 2012, before he ushered in Vladimir Putin's return as president, Medvedev sought to move Russia on from its reliance on oil and gas revenue.
'He was a puppet, but he wasn't 100 per cent a puppet,' says Peter Mironenko, a reporter who spent years covering Medvedev inside Russia before going into exile.
The actual results of his time in power were minimal. Modernisation drives were announced but typically lacked the funds to make any progress; everybody knew that Putin was really in control of the country. 'But there was a big part of the Russian elites who were hoping to see something new in him, who saw him as a candidate for change,' Mr Mironenko, a co-founder of The Bell, an influential website run by exiled Russian journalists, says.
In agreeing to step down – and sacrifice any ambition he had to run for a second term as president – Medvedev deepened Putin's loyalty towards him. In exchange, he was given the position of prime minister, which he held until the president felt the debt repaid and dismissed him in 2020.
The previous years had not been altogether kind. From having been a key player on the world stage, Medvedev's role was 'to draw public anger at him', Mr Mironenko says, leaving Putin to announce all the good news while he mopped up the bad.
Alexei Navalny's organisation exposed his mysteriously obtained empire of luxury properties, including the use of a castle outside Moscow. Critics gleefully posted the video of his awkward, strutting dance to 'American Boy' at a university reunion. All the while, the self-professed Pink Floyd fan was being roundly humiliated by Putin's propaganda machine, something which cannot but have left a profound 'psychological impact'. Rumours of heavy-drinking started around this time and linger to this day.
That Medvedev needed to find a new role would have been clear to the St. Petersburg-native who followed Putin into politics in 1999, serving as fresh-faced balance to his clan of ex-KGB agents and other security state siloviki. 'I think he realised better than anyone else how the rules have changed and the system changed' in February 2022, says Farida Rustamova, an exiled Russian journalist whose newsletter has become a key chronicle of the Russian elite.
The state would now go all-in on war. Any lingering traces of liberalism would need to be publicly – and repeatedly – expunged. 'The Russian security forces saw him as the sort of informal leader of any liberals who remained in the Russian system,' Ms Rustamova says. 'That's the key to his transformation.'
There was added motivation from the fact that key members of Mr Medvedev's inner-circle had already been arrested, including his former deputy Mikhail Abyzov and the billionaire Magomedov brothers who were alleged to have stolen from state funds meant for the 2018 World Cup.
What has surprised Western leaders with whom he once rubbed shoulders is the foul-mouthed virulence with which Medvedev has taken to calling them names and threatening to blow up their capitals. In a theatrical style not unlike Trump's, the former president has rounded on Western leaders as 'half-witted old women,', 'infantile morons,' 'pompous Anglo-saxon imbeciles,' and, in the case of Joe Biden, 'a strange grandfather with dementia'.
Before his latest battle with the US president, he had threatened nuclear strikes on London, Paris, Washington and, on multiple occasions, Ukraine. Medvedev is not totally on political skid row, Ms Rustamova points out. The position Putin created for him after his dismissal as prime minister – deputy chairman of the National Security Council – now allows him to hear the unfiltered views of the president at weekly meetings.
His intemperate posts on social media, she argues, are likely 'an old Kremlin trick', whereby an outrider is pushed to say outrageous things in public in order for Putin to present himself, in private, as a moderate, reasonable negotiator. 'Putin could say in his conversations with Trump, 'look what people around me want me to do, and I'm not doing that.''
The president's response to Trump's 50-day deadline – which was shortened to expire this week – has been muted. In this round of negotiations it has been left to Medvedev to remind Trump of Russia's 'Dead Hand', the semi-automated nuclear launch system, as he did on July 31.
At the very least, the fact that Putin has not restrained his one-time protege suggests he sees some purpose in his ranting, says Mr Mironenko. Trump took the bait on Friday. More is almost certain to be forthcoming, as the man whom the West once hoped would lead Russia into a new era of democracy shores up his position by whipping it ever further into madness.