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

The Age

10 hours ago

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', 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 that cannot but have left a profound psychological impact. Rumours of heavy drinking started around this time and linger to this day.
'The rules have changed'
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 a fresh-faced balance to a clan of ex-KGB agents and other security state types.
'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,' Rustamova says. 'That's the key to his transformation.'
There was added motivation from the fact that key members of 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, 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.''
Putin's response to Trump's 50-day deadline for Russia to agree to a Ukraine ceasefire – 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 Mironenko.