World
Russia does not want a global conflict, Medvedev says
Medvedev, who serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, praised Trump and said it was encouraging that contacts had resumed with Washington. He added that the world was getting very dangerous, but that Russia did not want a global conflict.
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine triggered the biggest confrontation between the West and Moscow since the depths of the Cold War. While US President Donald Trump’s envoys were trying to negotiate an end to the war with Russia and Ukraine, Medvedev expressed optimism about resumed contacts.
However, Medvedev, who has repeatedly hurled invective at Kyiv and Western powers while warning of escalation risks towards a nuclear “apocalypse”, said that the West had ignored Russian interests. He told Reuters, TASS, and the WarGonzo Russian war blogger in an interview at his residence outside Moscow: “The situation is very dangerous,” he stated.
“The pain threshold seems to be decreasing,” Medvedev noted. “We are not interested in a global conflict. We’re not crazy.” Now serving as Russian president from 2008 to 2012, Putin remains the final voice on Russian policy, but Medvedev gives a sense of hardliners’ thinking within the elite.
A cartoon hanging in Medvedev’s room showed him pointing a submachine gun at European leaders. Conflict first erupted in eastern Ukraine after pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution in 2014. Russia annexed Crimea and Moscow-backed separatists battled Kyiv’s armed forces in eastern Ukraine.
When asked about the flurry of global events in January, Medvedev said it had all been simply “too much.” He added that if Trump were “stolen” by a foreign power, then the United States would have clearly seen it as an act of war. He also stated Western claims of a Russian or Chinese threat to Greenland were false “horror stories” made up by Western leaders to justify their own behavior.
Putin and Trump both mentioned risks of escalation over Ukraine, according to European diplomats, who said Moscow had skillfully played the card to scare allies from heavily involved in the war.