Vladimir Putin’s sidekick Dmitry Medvedev – himself a former President of Russia – has threatened to target Britain with nuclear weapons if his country loses territory in Ukraine.
During his unhinged rant, shared via the instant messaging app Telegram, Medvedev also branded UK defence secretary Grant Shapps an “a**hole” – and insisted Putin was ready to take drastic action.
Medvedev is currently Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russia Federation and has made similar inflammatory remarks in the past – but his latest is likely to unnerve the West.
He declared: “Some time ago I wrote here in my TG channel: ‘A nuclear power cannot lose a war.’
“The snotty Anglo-American fosterlings immediately jumped out with heart-rending cries: ‘No, that’s not true at all, even the USA lost in wars.’”
Branding this an “an obvious lie” Medevedev insisted he was not talking about regional wars such as Vietnam.
He added: “I wrote about historical Wars in which the defense of one’s Fatherland takes place. Your land, your people, your values. These are the kind of wars that nuclear powers have never lost to anyone.
“Why am I writing about this again? Yes, I read the words of all sorts of Pistorius and Shapps and think: are they really such a**holes or are they just pretending? “The world cannot afford a Russian victory in this war.” Like this? That’s how.”
Speculating about what would happen if Russia lost and “Ukraine with its allies” won, Medvedev suggested the result would be “a return to the borders of 1991”, and the direct and irreversible collapse of present-day Russia” followed by a “violent civil war, tens of millions of victims, the death of our future and the collapse of everything in the world”.
He continued: “Do these idiots really believe that the people of Russia will swallow such a division of their country?
“That we will all think something like this: ‘Well, alas, this happened. They won. Today’s Russia has disappeared. It’s a pity, of course, but we must continue to live in a collapsing, dying country, since a nuclear war is much more terrible for us than the death of our loved ones, our children, our Russia…’?
“And that the leadership of the state, headed by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, in this case will tremble in its hand to make the most difficult decisions?
“Will we have the courage to do this if the disappearance of a thousand-year-old country, our great Motherland, is at stake, and the sacrifices made by the people of Russia over the centuries will be in vain?
“The answer is obvious.”
In an apparent message to the West, and referring to the eastern city captured by Russia this weekend, he concluded: “So it’s better to return everything before it’s too late. Or we will return it ourselves with maximum losses for the enemy. Like Avdiivka. Our warriors are heroes.”
A Republican opponent of new US funding for Ukraine argued at an international security conference Sunday that the package stuck in Congress wouldn’t “fundamentally change the reality” on the ground and that Russia has an incentive to negotiate peace.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, US Vice President Kamala Harris and others have advocated passage of the £48 billion ($60 billion) in aid at the Munich Security Conference, which coincided with Ukraine withdrawing troops from the eastern city of Avdiivka after months of intense combat.
But Senator JD Vance, an Ohio Republican and ally of Donald Trump, said “the problem in Ukraine … is that there’s no clear endpoint” and that the US doesn’t make enough weapons to support wars in eastern Europe, the Middle East and “potentially a contingency in East Asia.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson insists he won’t be “rushed” into approving the £75.5 billion ($95.3 billion) foreign aid package from the Senate that includes the help for Ukraine, despite overwhelming support from most Democrats and almost half the Republicans.
If the package goes through, “that is not going to fundamentally change the reality on the battlefield,” Vance argued, pointing to limited American manufacturing capacity.
He asked: “Can we send the level of weaponry we’ve sent for the last 18 months? We simply cannot. No matter how many checks the US Congress writes, we are limited there.”
