By Mark Trevelyan
(Reuters) -Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has become embroiled in a tense back-and-forth on social media that prompted U.S. President Donald Trump to announce he had ordered the re-positioning of two U.S. nuclear submarines.
Who is Medvedev, what is his track record and how influential is he?
PRESIDENT WHO BRIEFLY RAISED HOPES IN THE WEST
Medvedev was elected Russian president in 2008 when Vladimir Putin, having served two terms, was barred from standing again under the law in force at that time. Medvedev ran the Kremlin for four years, with Putin as his prime minister but widely assumed by analysts in Russia and the West to be still calling the shots, before the two swapped places after the 2012 election – a political manoeuvre that provoked opposition protests.
Medvedev, the son of two university professors, had studied law and worked for a time in the private sector. Short in height and quietly spoken, he was described by contemporaries as cultured and intelligent.
As president, he was seen initially in the West as a potential moderniser and reformer, prepared to work to thaw relations with the United States. In 2009 he signed the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with President Barack Obama.
But Medvedev’s presidency also saw Russia fight a brief war with its neighbour Georgia in 2008, and he failed to achieve his stated goals of tackling pervasive corruption, improving the rule of law in Russia, strengthening the role of civil society and rebalancing the economy to reduce its over-reliance on oil and gas production.
AFTER THE KREMLIN
Medvedev served as Putin’s prime minister for eight years in a period in which tensions with the West escalated anew, particularly over Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. But his political fortunes took a dive when he was removed in January 2020 and replaced by Mikhail Mishustin, who has held the post ever since. Medvedev was shunted into a new role as deputy chairman of the Security Council, a powerful body that includes the heads of Russia’s intelligence services.
WAR CHEERLEADER
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Medvedev carved out a new role for himself as an arch-hawk and full-throated champion of the war, hurling aggressive rhetoric at Kyiv and the West and warning repeatedly of the risk of a nuclear “apocalypse”.
In May 2024 he said it would be a “fatal mistake” on the part of the West to think that Russia was not ready to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine.
He also spoke of the potential to strike unnamed hostile countries with strategic nuclear weapons.
His statements – including personal attacks on foreign leaders – were frequently designed to shock, insult and provoke. He referred to Ukrainians as “cockroaches”, in language Kyiv condemned as openly genocidal, and called President Volodymyr Zelenskiy a criminal, a drug addict, a louse, a rat and a freak.
In January 2023, he accused Japan’s prime minister of shameful subservience to the United States and suggested he should ritually disembowel himself.
Russian opposition figures have dismissed Medvedev’s outpourings as sad, impotent rants. However, some Western diplomats say they give a flavour of the thinking in Kremlin policy-making circles. Until now, they have rarely provoked a direct response from Western leaders.
SPAT WITH TRUMP
That changed last month when Trump rebuked Medvedev and accused him of throwing around the “N” word after the Russian criticised U.S. air strikes on Iran and said “a number of countries” were ready to supply Iran with nuclear warheads.
When Trump imposed a deadline on Moscow to end the war in Ukraine or face further sanctions, including on buyers of its exports, Medvedev accused him of playing a “game of ultimatums” and moving a step closer to war between Russia and the U.S.
Trump retorted: “Tell Medvedev, the failed former President of Russia, who thinks he’s still President, to watch his words. He’s entering very dangerous territory!”
Medvedev waded in again last Thursday, saying Trump’s “nervous reaction” showed Russia was on the right course and referring again to Moscow’s nuclear capabilities. Trump delivered his statement the following day on posting U.S. nuclear submarines in “the appropriate regions”, since when Medvedev has not posted again.
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan in London; editing by Mark Heinrich)
