Fall spiral in the style of Dmitry Medvedev

Illustration by Ville Ranta.

Sure, Former Russian leader’s furious tirades are a desperate attempt to retain political relevance.

Dmitry Medvedev, the position of deputy chair of the Security Council, is on the bottom.

As time went on, rumours swirled in Moscow political circles about Medvedev’s increasing alcohol consumption. In 2020, Vladimir Putin told him to resign as prime minister but gave him a token job as deputy chair of the security council (no one knows what a mess is it).

We remember Medvedev and Putin walked at the official president’s residence in Zavidovo, on 24 September 2011, the day Putin declared he was ready to return to the Russian presidency. 

But there  behind Putin summoned Medvedev to a fishing trip in 2011 and told his protege he would be returning to the presidency, tells The Guardian, Medvedev meekly accepted it. As part of this deal, Medvedev asked that he should remain prime minister, and seems to have genuinely hoped he would become president again after four years.

Medvedev did what Putin wanted, but Putin stopped trusting him, and that turned Medvedev’s life into misery.

In Medvedev’s subsequent public appearances, he already looked a broken man. 

He was frequently caught on camera napping at official events, including at the opening ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014. A video investigation by Navalny linked a network of palaces and vineyards to Medvedev. He denied the allegations, but there followed a wave of street protests from those who felt Medvedev had turned out to be just as venal as others in the Russian elite.

In the decade after Medvedev left the presidency, hopes for any kind of genuine liberalisation in Russia faded. In 2014, Putin decided on the annexation of Crimea, and since then the system has only grown more authoritarian.

TV Rain, the television station promoted by Medvedev, was taken off air in 2014. In 2021 it was branded a “foreign agent” and its online output was effectively outlawed soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It recently started broadcasting again from outside Russia.

Twitter, once so beloved by Medvedev, was banned in Russia earlier last year. And now, instead of talking about copying innovative economic ideas from the US, Medvedev talks about nuclear war.

According to The Guardian, the increasing authoritarianism of the Putin regime, and even the invasion of Ukraine, can be traced back to the failed attempts to manage a transition.