A Revealing Russian Rant - and a prediction ...

The Putin stand-in Dmitry Medvedev, lately given to vehement anti-Ukrainian rants, has excelled himself.  Extracts:

WHY WILL UKRAINE DISAPPEAR? BECAUSE NOBODY NEEDS IT 

1. Europe doesn’t need Ukraine. The forced support of the Nazi regime, by the American mentor’s order, has put Europeans into a financial and political inferno. All for the sake of bandera’s unterukraine, that even the snobby, insolent Polacks don’t take for a valid country, and time and again toss in the issue of its western areas anschluss. There’s a nice perspective ahead: to permanently put the nouveau-Ukrainian blood-sucking parasites on the decrepit EU’s arthritis-crippled neck. That’ll be the final fall of Europe, once majestic, but robbed off by degeneration … The ruling junta’s criminal ambitions forced Ukrainians to beg and roam around the countries and continents, searching for a better life. All that is for an obscure European perspective. Or rather, to let the harlequin in a khaki tricot and his band of thievish Nazi clowns to put the money stolen from the West into their offshore accounts. Would ordinary Ukrainians need that? Nobody on this planet needs such a Ukraine. That’s why it will disappear …

Funnily enough, to judge from some of the BTL comments around here, some of our readers would broadly agree.  But that’s not the point for now.  Why is Medvedev venting thus, like a two-bit incel bedsit dweller?  For answer we turn to the excellent Kamil Galeev, who has noted several times already this phenomenon of high-profile Russians going puce in public for Western consumption, and has set out his explanation once again, and at some length.  

Summarising:  any high-profile Russian Kremlin-dweller who might even vaguely appear to the West as potentially a more amenable interlocutor than Putin, is very dangerous to Putin.  That’s because they might serve as a rallying point for Russian oligarchs etc who’ve had enough.  So, in order not to be a candidate for falling out of a window, such a high-profile, apparently Western-acceptable Russian must periodically rant in such unpleasant terms that nobody would take them for “someone the West could do business with”.  Both Medvedev and Lavrov comply with this vital self-preservation imperative whenever it seems appropriate: and this is another example.

So far, so plausible.  But why such an extreme manifestation just now?  Assuming Galeev’s explanation is correct, it must surely follow that Putin is fearful right now of some major setbacks about to come Russia’s way, presumably when the long-foretold Ukrainian offensive bursts forth.  Or at least, as a risk-averse fellow he’s making prudent preparations for setbacks and the inevitable domestic discontent that will follow.

We may not have long to wait.

BTW, Medvedev also follows in the grand C@W tradition of making New Year predictions.  You’ll like these, too  - e.g. for 2023 … 

1. Oil price will rise to $150 a barrel, and gas price will top $5.000 per 1.000 cubic meters

2. The UK will rejoin the EU

3. The EU will collapse after the UK’s return; Euro will drop out of use as the former EU currency …

8. Civil war will break out in the US, California. and Texas becoming independent states as a result. Texas and Mexico will form an allied state. Elon Musk’ll win the presidential election in a number of states which, after the new Civil War’s end, will have been given to the GOP

You get the drift.  What a wag.  Bet he keeps away from windows, though …

ND