Former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev told his followers on Telegram that Russia must not stop its military offensive against Ukraine until it ceases to exist. He called the war “an existential conflict”.
Medvedev, who is currently deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, wrote that Russia must destroy and fully dismantle the Ukrainian state that is “terrorist in its essence,” making sure “this filth” never re-emerges again.
“Should it take years or even decades, then so be it. We have no choice: either we will destroy their hostile political regime, or the collective West will eventually tear Russia to pieces.
“And in this case, it will perish with us. Nobody needs this,” he wrote, again indicating his country would use nuclear weapons if it felt sufficiently threatened.
“And while they don’t feel sorry for them, the West will never get past the point where it is too damaging to its interests. No matter how much they whine at their summits and at the UN. Foreign war sooner or later becomes boring, expensive and irrelevant,” he wrote.
“And for us it is a tragedy involving our people. This is an existential conflict. War for self-preservation. Either they or we.” Thus, Medvedev thinks, [Western] allies will get tired and beg for negotiations and a freeze on the conflict, while any counteroffensive will fizzle out.
“But we must not stop until the current, inherently terrorist Ukrainian state is completely dismantled,” he continued.
“It must be destroyed to the ground. Or rather, so that even the ashes from it did not remain. So that this abomination could never, under any circumstances, be reborn.”
Dmitry Medvedev is inspecting what the Russian army says is an exhibition of western equipment it captured fighting in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/OWezCP3hkz
— Jack Straw (@JackStr42679640) August 17, 2023
It is not the first time Medvedev made such agressive statements. At the end of July he said that Moscow “would have to use a nuclear weapon” if Ukraine’s current counteroffensive was successful.
He also threatened hypersonic missile attacks on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague after the organisation issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In May, Medvedev claimed the Baltic States were “Russian provinces” and Poland was “temporarily occupied”.
