The former Russian president and currently the deputy chief of the Security Council has shown another face. In so far as the former Dmitry Medvedev was portrayed as a liberal, a supporter of Russian modernisation. Currently he is seen differently, through his writing in social media. His output is written in a bellicose spirit, seeped in hard-line nationalism and based on the idea that ‘we cannot lose this war’. It is worth testing out some of his rhetorical flourishes.

Careful what you write as there are digital traces…

He wrote at the beginning of April that ‘Russia would not be supplying foodstuffs to its enemies’. He wrote that foodstuffs are a form of ‘silent weaponry’. Moscow could take advantage of this position, supplying its allies in exchange for roubles. It would refuse trade with those it saw as enemies. In the case when the price of wheat rose by 61 percent in the previous year, reaching a historical high, and the UN had to cut its humanitarian wheat aid to the poorest in the third world by a half, this declaration had some weight behind it.

WAR IN UKRAINE

The statements made by Vladimir Putin also underline a conscious and premeditated underlying action. The next phase of the crisis may mean that the war will set off a wave of emigration from the Near East and North Africa to Europe. They will pressurise the UN membership in connection with the energy crisis so as to break the sanctions imposed on Russia.

In the light of Medvedev’s declaration, Russia started total war with the West. No holds are barred and the goal is to destroy its economy and social fabric of ‘all who are against us’.

In an interview with RIA Novosti News Agency , Medvedev reminded again that Russia remains the world’s premier nuclear superpower and placing its strategic forces on nuclear alert will serve to ‘ cool Polish heads and those of its US satellites’, that that started the necessity of a conflict with Moscow.

He did not just threaten states but their citizens. He said ‘ Everyone leaves a digital trail. Anyone who writes despicable thing about Russia, about our country about individual citizens, has to take stock. It remains unforgotten for ever in people’s memory.

De-nazifying a Jew

The metamorphosis form a ‘liberal’ politician, to a ‘Greater-Russia’ champion is not the result of the last few weeks and the war in Ukraine. Last October, he published a piece in the Kommersant economic daily that was aggressive and anti-Ukrainian even by Russian standards. It compared the policy of Volodymyr Zelensky with that of a hypothetical ‘Jew serving in the SS’. In this, he alluded to the ancestry of the Ukrainian president and to current strain of Russian antisemitic feeling. He echoed the still-used but most basic Russian narrative as if the Ukrainian elite had been inspired by the ideology and policies of Adolf Hitler.

In his opinion, American policy is ‘worse than the USSR’ in its conduct towards the countries of the Soviet bloc. The aim is to transform the allies into ‘anti-Russian’ an instrumentalised and artificial creation whose aim is the destruction of the Russian Federation.

It was possible to see this, up until autumn last year, as a radical rhetoric of dubious quality. In the light of the war that is being conducted by Russia against Ukraine, this takes on a different hue. Moreso that after 6 weeks of war and a failed attempt to seize the capital, the former Russian president supports the de-nazification of the authorities in Kyiv and the forcible transformation of Ukraine into a country friendly to Moscow.

Our country, Poland, figured continually in Dmitry Medvedev’s narrative. ‘Polish propaganda is the most pernicious, vulgar, and vociferous critic of Russia; a community of political imbeciles’ he wrote at the end of month in a short article on a Russian social media site, Telegram. Polish policy regarding Russia, according to the former premier, is characterised as not only ‘stupid’ and myopic but is also evidence of phantasmagorical nostalgia’ after a long-lost empire and Commonwealth.

Medvedev is of the opinion that Polish elites have allowed their country to have been colonised by the USA. They have spoken about us in a similar way as about Ukraine. Poles do not want conflict with Russia but they are governed by an elite who haven’t matured into their role and operate, objectively speaking, to the detriment of their nation.

No more liberals

So what has happened to Dmitry Medvedev? What factors have affected his metamorphosis? Perhaps his true face has been revealed. The Russian politician who hitherto has had a squeeky-clean liberal image.

Let us look for an answer in a substantive matter, namely what had happened to Russia after the start of the war with Ukraine. All the opinion polls conducted in the last few days by the Levada Centre, the most credible source, showed a rise of 12 percent for Putin, and 11 percent for Prime Minister Mishustin. For Jedinaya Rossiya , United Russia, the party of the ruling government and that of Vyacheslav Volodin, hawkish speaker of the parliament by 12 percent.

The picture of ‘rallying around the fag’ and the authorities has shown convincingly an 81 percent level of support for the ‘operation’ in Ukraine. The war is also seen as a defence against the threat of NATO. Street demonstrations have not only diminished because of draconian punishments and brutal interventions, but also because Russians feel that they are surrounded by enemies and are conducting a war that they cannot lose.

We see a similar trend among the Russian elites. It was possible to hear at the beginning of the conflict, at least public utterances by former politicians such as Arkady Dvorkovich, deputy prime minister in Medvedev’s government or that of influential oligarch Oleg Deripaska who had urged a swift cessation to the hostilities. These voices are not heard nowadays.

Farida Rustamova, an independent Russian journalist, had compiled a general picture of those who govern contemporary Russia on the basis of interviews undertaken with representatives of the Russian political and business elite. She shows that after a month of war, there are no splits into liberals and hardliners. The old divisions, fractional affiliations and sympathies have disappeared. All those in the face of anti-Russian sanctions are conscious that given a long lasting war even decades, the Russian situation may change.

There is no longer a pro-Western option. There is only the thinking, namely that the war must be won and to one has to position oneself upon the shifting sands of the ruling camp. In such a situation, Dmitry Medvedev’s comments are aimed to shore up his position in the Kremlin. In connection with this evolution, the mood music in the Kremlin, among the elites and ordinary citizens alike, has become more nationalistic and radical, given that as the former prime minister’s popularity polls have not improved.

Not only Putin, but Mishustin and Volodin are the only ones who can talk of a rise in popularity. Provincial governors whose role is that of a lightning rod, have risen by 7 percent in a month. Only Dmitry Medvedev, when he was and has still remained a disliked politician, is with an unchanged popularity level in the public eye.

Zhirinovsky’s role

It’s frustration that shows on the part of the former president. It has been two years since he relinquished the premiership; a bitter pill indeed. His dismissal came as a surprise. The promotion of Mikhail Mishustin, a faceless bureaucrat was a hammer blow. He did get a new assignment as the deputy chief of the national security council to be sure, but there the main daily work is undertaken by Nikolai Patrushev the strong arm secretary. The nomination was understood in Russia as a typical demotion shown as a post that is given to former but now useless politicians.

Earlier last year, on the eve of parliamentary elections, Medvedev, still the leader of the United Russia Party had another bitter pill to swallow. The BBC reported relying on Kremlin sources, that he wanted to figure at the top of the electoral lists of his party. But he was blocked on the grounds of his alleged unpopularity in one of the so called ‘anti polls’. Vladimir Putin installed the defence minister Sergei Shoigu instead at the top pf the national list. Medvedev found himself out of the loop, a gesture that he understood as a slight to his status. Vladimir Putin rubbed salt into these wounds by not opening up a national list of candidates as h had done earlier.

Andrei Kolesnikov an expert at Moscow’s Carnegie Centre is convinced that Dmitry Medvedev has been demoted to playing second fiddle to Vladimir Zhirinovsky- demoted by Kremlin technocrats. The recently deceased politician was seen as a liberal democrat radical, a link between market phraseology and hard line nationalism or even Greater-Russian chauvinism. After the outbreak of protests in Khabarovsk and the arrest of the governor Sergei Furgal, former Zhirinovsky acolyte, the Kemlin did not wish to hand over the reins of power to someone plying the same nationalistic slogans in the coming difficult times thus giving them a chance to take over control of growing electorate. So Medvedev was chosen as a safe pair of hands.

But he wasn’t just ‘disorganised’ and had not much to lose, but he remained as a positive memory in Russian minds. In 2018, while sill at head of the government, he gave Aleksander Lukashenko an ultimatum that deepened Belarusian economic dependency on Russia. The finale of this process culminated in the autumn of that year when the Prime Ministers of both countries, Raman Halouchenka and Mikhail Mishustin initialled a ‘road map’ to economic integration, renewing the hopes of Moscow to swallow up its ‘fraternal’ Bealrusian neighbour.

He is a man who has built his career, since the time of becoming a member of the advisory board of the Saint Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, befriending Vladimir Putin and entering his entourage. His liberalism, like his current nationalism is a costume to don according to the exigencies of Russian politics. If the situation demands, he becomes Poland’s bitterest enemy and should the winds of history change, he changes tack and becomes our warmest friend.

- Marek Budzisz
- Translated by Jan Darasz