Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chief of the Russian Security Council and former president, took an apparent satirical shot at U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday by saying the United States should become a “responsible superpower,” not a “refuge for the senile.”
“While the U.S. establishment wants Russia to collapse, Russia wants to see the United States a strong and smart country rather than a final refuge for those who are gradually slipping into senility,” Medvedev said in a post on the encrypted messaging platform Telegram, according to a translation by Russian news agency Tass.
Medvedev pushed back against U.S. sanctions against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by saying America should become a more “responsible” state that “seeks to solve its numerous domestic problems instead of undermining the development of other countries.”
“All this is possible unless you believe that the U.S. president’s name is Volodymyr Zelensky and keep asking your aides if the correct spelling is Iraq or Iran,” he jeered, taking shots at the supposed dominance of American politics by Ukraine’s leader, and the current American president’s confusion of Iran and Iraq in his first State of the Union address, respectively.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in Brussels on December 15, 2021. (JOHANNA GERON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Medvedev, a loyal ally of dictator Vladimir Putin and his temporary puppet fill-in as president of Russia from 2008 to 2012, has been putting in overtime as the regime’s attack dog over the past few weeks. For example, he is one of the Russian mouthpieces most prone to threatening nuclear war if the Western world pushes Moscow too hard.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on February 10, 2022. (MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)
After the latest invasion of Ukraine began, and the first round of sanctions were imposed by Europe and the United States, Medvedev said it was time to break Russia’s diplomatic ties with the Western world and “padlock the embassies.”
“Russia has the might to put all our brash enemies in their place,” Medvedev boasted last Thursday.
On Monday, Medvedev penned an essay that denounced Poland as an “evil, vulgar and shrill critic of Russia” run by “imbecilic vassals” of the United States.
Medvedev ranted at the Poles as a nation of ingrates who “dream about forgetting” the “Soviet soldiers who defeated fascism and expelled the invaders from Polish cities” in World War II.
“The Fascist occupation is openly equated with the Soviet. It is difficult to come up with a more deceitful and disgusting rhetoric, but the Poles succeed,” he huffed.
“The interests of the citizens of Poland have been sacrificed to the Russophobia of these mediocre politicians and their puppeteers from across the ocean with clear signs of senile insanity,” he railed, previewing his later mockery of President Biden’s mental capacity.
Medvedev also insulted Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki for supporting “de-Russification of the Polish and European economy,” warning the Polish leader that defying Moscow “may be costly” and could sacrifice Poland’s “tranquility.”
Biden is scheduled to visit Poland on Friday, after attending a NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday.