Medvedev vs Trump: Russian ex-president becomes Putin's provocateur-in-chief

Russia’s ex-president Dmitri Medvedev found his way back into the headlines when his belligerent social media exchange with US President Donald Trump led to the repositioning on August 1 of two US nuclear submarines to what Trump called “appropriate regions”. 

Medvedev has recently become an ultra-nationalist provocateur on social media, especially since Russia began its large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It's a major metamorphosis for a politician who during his time as president, from 2008 to 2012, embodied the liberal face of Russia. 

Accustomed to outrageous statements 

“Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform after announcing his decision to re-deploy two submarines.  

Medvedev had taken exception to Trump imposing a new 10-day deadline for Russia to end its war in Ukraine, and posted that Trump was "playing the ultimatum game with Russia… Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war." 

On X, the former Russian president raised the prospect of a third World War if Trump persisted in trying to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to engage in peace negotiations with Ukraine. On Telegram, Medvedev referred to "Dead Hand” – the Soviet Union’s system for launching a nuclear strike. 

Trump seems to have decided that he had had enough. But given Medvedev’s long history of sabre rattling, Trump’s reaction of “taking the bait” instead of ignoring the posts is a bit puzzling, says Stephen Hall, a specialist in Russian politics at the University of Bath. 

Medvedev is a “loose cannon ... trying to make himself relevant,” says Jenny Mathers, a specialist in Russian security issues at Aberystwyth University in the UK. 

If you want to know what Putin is thinking and above all “what he wants to the world to hear”, it's not Medvedev you should be listening to, but rather Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Mathers says. 

Read moreDmitry Medvedev: Russia's hawkish ex-president

Medvedev has made a habit of making outrageous statements in recent years, following his term as president and then as prime minister from 2012 to 2020.   

Medvedev has 1.7 million subscribers on Telegram, where he his posts tend to be aggressively nationalistic. He describes Ursula von der Leyen, the German President of the European Commission, as a “crazy old lady”. France is accused of being nostalgic for the Vichy regime, while the Baltic states are simply described as “wretched”. These insults are from recent posts seen by more than three million Telegram users. 

Why so much animosity? Medvedev boasts that “hatred is the most important weapon” in the battle against what he calls European “Russophobia”.  

He has always embodied a more extreme version of the image that Putin wanted to project to the world, Mathers says. “So when Putin was being slightly liberal, Medvedev was quite a bit more so,” she says. 

The two faces of Dmitri Medvedev 

When Medvedev was designated to take over as Russian president in 2008, Putin had decided it was time for a rapprochement with the US and then president Barack Obama.  

“His presidency was about wanting to reach out to the US, wanting to strike deals and have good relations,” Mathers says. 

Kremlin strategists successfully portrayed Medvedev as embodying a more modern Russia in tune with the West, someone who “knew how to use Twitter and an iPad”, Hall says. 

In Putin's eyes, Medvedev also had another advantage: he did not belong to the circle of “siloviki”, agents of the Russian police and intelligence services. “He's a lawyer by training, so he probably is a moderniser by the standards of Russia, or at least of the current Russian regime,” Hall says. 

Trump orders nuclear submarines moved after Russian provocation

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Putin’s return as Russian president in 2012 marked the beginning of a more authoritarian and imperialist turn for Russia. Since then, Medvedev has discarded any semblance of moderation. “He now says things that are much more extreme than what Putin says," Mathers says. 

For Hall, his nationalistic stance is partly a question of “political survival". 

Medvedev's career has followed a downward trajectory since 2012. After his term as president, he was named Putin’s prime minister, only to end up as deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council.  

Though he has been sidelined, he at least has “an official position that allows him to speak out on matters of national security”, says Mathers. 

Given his current job, his responsibilities are limited, says Hall. “As deputy of the Security Council he is possibly very good at pushing paper around and setting up meetings” and having tea with officials like Nikolai Patrushev and Sergei Shoigu, the two secretaries-general of the Security Council. “But other than that, he doesn't play a huge role."  

To provoke is to win? 

By being strident, Medvedev hopes to prove that he is still someone who counts in politics and that he can be useful.  

“I think at the moment Medvedev is taking the Zhirinovsky role,” says Hall, referring to late ultra-nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, whose extremist and provocative declarations served as a way for the Kremlin to gauge what viewpoints might be accepted by the public. 

Read moreZhirinovsky: Russia's ultra-nationalist who predicted Ukraine conflict

On the international stage, the Kremlin can let its new provocateur-in-chief Medvedev act without too much risk. After all, he doesn't hold a very important position, says Mathers. So if one of his statements goes too far, “Putin can either ignore what he says” or indicate that it does not reflect the official position of Russia. 

The Kremlin can also hope that Medvedev's bellicose outbursts will prompt the West or a Western country to limit its support for Ukraine – better safe than sorry. 

Moscow knows that Western democracies cannot afford to completely ignore Medvedev's threats, even if 99 percent of the time, talk of nuclear Armageddon is just bluster, notes Hall. Western governments cannot totally rule out the possibility that Russia will "actually use nuclear weapons", he says. 

Has Medvedev managed to permanently antagonise Trump? That remains to be seen. The US president has for some time stepped up his rhetoric and threatened  more concrete action against Russia. 

But Trump could hardly attack Putin directly, says Hall, because in order to end the war in Ukraine, “he needs Putin to negotiate". 

In this respect, Medvedev appeared to be an ideal target for Trump's anger. He has the advantage of being a former president, notes Hall – and so has the stature to be an interlocutor in diplomatic exchanges with Trump via social media. 

This article has been adapted from the original in French by David Howley.