Is former president Medvedev going on with his tirades or is he a lightning rod for Putin? | Abroad

On the evening of Boxing Day it happened again. Medvedev ventured on Telegram to forecasts for 2023. According to him, the oil price will rise to USD 150 per barrel, the gas price to USD 5,000 per thousand cubic meters. The United Kingdom will return to the European Union, which will collapse, and Poland and Hungary will annex the western regions of Ukraine.

Germany will proclaim a ‘Fourth Reich’, to which the satellite states of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and the ‘Republic of Kiev’ will join. France and the ‘Fourth Reich’ are at war with each other. It will result in the partition of Europe, including Poland.

The Western financial system, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, will collapse. The dollar and the euro will no longer be the world’s reserve currency. There will be a return to gold, digital currencies will become dominant.

In the United States, the states of California and Texas will become independent as a result of a civil war, Medvedev further foresees. Texas forms a ‘state of unity’ with Mexico. Elon Musk is elected president in the part where the Republicans are in control. Something Musk wrote on Twitter on Tuesday: “This is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever read.”

In his time, Medvedev was a fairly pro-Western president, who was crazy about Apple gadgets and had an excellent relationship with his then American colleague Barack Obama. After Vladimir Putin’s return to the highest office in 2012, he again became prime minister.

When Putin sacked him and his government in early 2020, Medvedev was given a specially created position: Vice Chairman of the powerful Security Council. No one took him seriously anymore.

It is striking that Medvedev received a new post on Boxing Day. Putin appointed him (again) Vice Chairman of the Military Industry Committee. It made the independent Russian political scientist Majkl Naki chuckle on the YouTube channel Popular Politics: “In addition to the presidency of the governing party United Russia and the vice presidency of the Security Council, he now has a third, completely pointless job.”

Naki argues that Medvedev no longer has any political influence. But his tirades against the West need at least the approval of the Kremlin. And so the question arises: why? According to Naki, Medvedev has always been a lightning rod for Putin. “If anything went well in Russia, it was because of Putin. If things went wrong, then Prime Minister Medvedev was the head of jut,” said Naki.

But the more authoritarian Putin becomes, the more Russians will remember Medvedev with fondness, thinks Naki. “And even in the West they could see Medvedev as an alternative to Putin.”

To prevent Putin from “going all over his tea water, Medvedev is now doing everything he can to play the main Nazi,” says Naki. “He not only writes Nazi texts, but also starts wearing long, black leather jackets. A clear association (with the German Gestapo, ed.).”