Dmitry Medvedev: From failed Kremlin reformer to Trump's boogeyman
Last week, United States President Donald Trump warned him to 'watch his words' and ordered a repositioning of two US nuclear submarines in response to Medvedev's online threats.
The repositioning closer to Russia followed 'highly provocative statements' from Medvedev, who serves as deputy head of Russia's Security Council, Trump wrote on his Truth Social network on August 1.
'I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that,' Trump wrote, without specifying the regions or the submarines' class.
Medvedev, who, despite his title, has no power to order nuclear strikes, retorted with a gloating remark.
'If some words of Russia's former president cause such a nervous response from the oh-so-scary US president, it means that Russia is right about everything and will keep going its own way,' Medvedev wrote on Telegram.
'Let [Trump] remember his favourite movies about the Walking Dead [zombie apocalypse series] and about how dangerous can be the 'dead hand' that doesn't exist naturally,' Medvedev wrote.
The online feud began in mid-July, when Trump gave Russian President Vladimir Putin, Medvedev's boss and mentor for three decades, 50 days to make a peace deal with Ukraine.
Medvedev called the ultimatum 'theatrical' and said that 'Russia didn't care'.
'Nuclear weapons are not Moscow's monopoly'
According to a former Russian diplomat, while Trump's warnings send a signal to the Kremlin, the 'noise' around the submarines has no military significance.
'What matters far more is that Trump's words served as a reminder – nuclear weapons are not Moscow's monopoly,' Boris Bondarev, who focused on nuclear non-proliferation and arms control, told Al Jazeera.
Medvedev's comments reflect Putin's views – and Trump's response could return both down to the earth of realpolitik, he added.
'Had such an approach been part of a general strategy to make Putin's view on the world and his own place in it more adequate, it would have been the beginning of a real end of the war' in Ukraine, said Bondarev, who quit his foreign ministry job to protest against Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
'But it seems to me that Donald just uttered [his threat] and doesn't mean anything serious,' he said.
A pawn in the US-China game
To a Ukrainian military analyst, the Trump-Medvedev feud is part of Moscow's and Washington's bigger political games.
'Putin uses Medvedev as a tool to express statements related to nuclear weapons, he doesn't want to discredit his own good peacekeeper's name,' Lieutenant-General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said ironically.
In Moscow's 'media spectacle' with Washington, Medvedev plays the 'bad cop', Romanenko told Al Jazeera.
Meanwhile, Trump's order to reposition the subs is a step to score a diplomatic victory ahead of his summit with China's Xi Jinping.
The summit may take place on September 3, when Beijing will lavishly celebrate the 80th anniversary of Japan's surrender that ended World War II.
Putin has already been invited to oversee a military parade in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, but Trump is still mulling his response.
The online feud may be presented to Xi as a victory of sorts, Romanenko said – along with Moscow's possible agreement to an air and sea ceasefire.
The agreement will be forced by the heavy damage Ukrainian drones inflicted on Russia's military depots, transport infrastructure and oil refineries, Romanenko said.
'Playing the fool'
Trump may not realise that some Russians see Medvedev as a political has-been whose online rants are reportedly fuelled by his worsening alcoholism.
He was elected Russia's president in 2008, after Putin had completed two consecutive presidential terms and could not run for a third time.
The move and the ensuing propaganda campaign to promote Medvedev's candidacy were nicknamed a 'castling' after the chess term.
It immediately spawned political jokes that ridiculed the real power dynamic between Medvedev and Putin.
In one of them, Putin arrives at a restaurant with Medvedev and orders a steak. The waiter asks, 'And what about the vegetable?' referring to the choice of a side dish. After a long look at Medvedev, Putin answers, 'The vegetable will have steak, too.'
However, Medvedev cultivated a personal and political image that contrasted with Putin's.
He started using social networks, met with the rock bands U2 and Deep Purple, and began cautious reforms that made analysts talk about a political thaw and a reset of Russia's ties with the West.
However, Medvedev's failed perestroika ended with giant rallies against Putin's 2012 return to the presidency and massive vote rigging.
The resulting tightening of political screws ended with Putin's turn to belligerent nationalism and the war in Ukraine.
Five years later, another wave of popular protests throughout Russia followed the release of a documentary about Medvedev's luxurious, Monaco-sized palatial complex.
The documentary was made by the late opposition leader Alexey Navalny's team and got tens of millions of views on YouTube.
At the time, as Medvedev served as prime minister, his approval ratings kept waning.
In 2022, Putin unceremoniously sacked him – and gave him the Security Council job, a sinecure for demoted allies.
The fall from Putin's grace prompted Medvedev's transformation into an online troll who posts threats to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations and sabre-rattles Moscow's nuclear might. Many posts appeared online long after midnight.
'Degraded'
There are three viewpoints on why Medvedev changed his tune to become the Kremlin's attack dog, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany's Bremen University.
One is that after not being allowed to run for president for the second time in 2012, Medvedev started drinking and 'degraded to the current state', Mitrokhin told Al Jazeera.
The second one is that by 'playing fool', he repeats what Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had done to survive under his ruthless predecessor Joseph Stalin to survive and compete for the Kremlin throne after his boss's death, Mitrokhin said.
And the third explanation Mitrokhin agrees with is that Medvedev 'as a character, has always been very vile and warlike'.
But his aggression was only limited to what Putin allowed him to do – such as nominally order Russia's 2008 war with ex-Soviet Georgia or be in charge of supplying weaponry to pro-Moscow rebels in southeastern Ukraine in 2014.
Mitrokhin described him as 'a very aggressive small man with plenty of psychological complexes – a Napoleon's syndrome – who has a chance to reveal his 'inner self'. And he does – with his master's approval'.
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