- Kremlin hawk talks of need for harsh campaign against West - Ex-president Medvedev: Response needed against sanctions - Calls for Western society, infrastructure to be targeted - Western officials have accused Russia of sabotage - Moscow has publicly rejected those allegations
One of Russia’s top security officials called on Thursday for Russians to mobilise to inflict “maximum harm” on Western societies and infrastructure as payback for increasingly tough sanctions being imposed on Moscow by the U.S. and its allies.
The statement by Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and Vladimir Putin’s predecessor as president, came as the West sharply escalated sanctions on Moscow in efforts to degrade its ability to wage war in Ukraine.
“We need to (respond). Not only the authorities, the state, but all our people in general. After all, they - the U.S. and its crappy allies - have declared a war on us without rules!,” Medvedev wrote on his official Telegram channel, which has over 1.3 million followers.
“Every day we should try to do maximum harm to those countries that have imposed these restrictions. Harm their economies, their institutions and their rulers. Harm the well-being of their citizens, their confidence in the future.”
Diplomats say Medvedev gives a flavour of hardline and high level thinking in the Kremlin, though Kyiv and Kremlin critics play down his influence, casting him as a scaremonger whose job is to deter Western action over Ukraine.
In his latest comments he spoke of the need to find critical vulnerabilities in Western economies, to target energy, industry, transport, banking and social services, and to stir up social tensions.
Western officials have already spoken about suspected Russian sabotage activities across the West, including arson, with some calling for Russian diplomats’ movements to be curbed.
The Kremlin, which said on Thursday it was considering retaliatory action against the U.S. that would best suit Moscow’s own interests, and the Russian foreign ministry have rejected the sabotage allegations as false.
‘Fake news’
Medvedev, who styled himself as a Western-friendly liberal during his 2008-12 presidency before reinventing himself as one of the Kremlin’s toughest hawks, spoke of the need to step up an information war against the West.
“Are they screaming about our use of fake news? Let’s turn their lives into a crazy nightmare in which they can’t distinguish wild fiction from the realities of the day, infernal evil from the routine of life,” he wrote.
Medvedev also called for Russia to weaponise space and arm the West’s enemies, as the new U.S. sanctions forced Russia’s leading exchange to halt dollar and euro trading, obscuring access to reliable pricing for the Russian currency.
Dear Russians still alive to read this,
You might as well mobilize against Putin himself for all the good he’s done for you and your country. He’s the one shoving your face into the western meat grinder. He’s the one who violated the accords.
“We need to (respond). Not only the authorities, the state, but all our people in general. After all, they - the U.S. and its crappy allies - have declared a war on us without rules!,” Medvedev wrote on his official Telegram channel, which has over 1.3 million followers.
“Every day we should try to do maximum harm to those countries that have imposed these restrictions. Harm their economies, their institutions and their rulers. Harm the well-being of their citizens, their confidence in the future.”
I don’t think that escalation with the West is likely gonna be advantageous for Russia, but I suppose that, in the grand tradition of empiricism, there’s only one way to find out for sure.
One of Russia’s top security officials called on Thursday for Russians to mobilise to inflict “maximum harm” on Western societies and infrastructure as payback for increasingly tough sanctions being imposed on Moscow by the U.S. and its allies.
So… The sanctions are tough? You’re saying they are having an effect? Good that we finally get this confirmed.
“We need to (respond). Not only the authorities, the state, but all our people in general. After all, they - the U.S. and its crappy allies - have declared a war on us without rules!,”
This is a lie. The rule that Russia broke was “do not invade neighboring countries and don’t murder and rape the civilians”.
In his latest comments he spoke of the need to find critical vulnerabilities in Western economies, to target energy, industry, transport, banking and social services, and to stir up social tensions.
Yet again, why focus on this if the Russian economy is booming and sanctions are toothless?
While we can discuss how big the effects of the sanctions on Russia and the Russian economy are, we can conclude that the sanctions have a real tangible and a clearly noticable impact.
These are the people with 3 warships and a sub in Cuba?
One of those, the Nikolay Chiker, is a oceangoing fleet tug to tow the others if they break down. While it’s a commissioned ship in the Russian Navy, I’m not sure that it’s entirely fair to call it a warship.
