It just gets crazier and crazier. Now Dmitry Medvedev, the unhinged factotum of Vladimir Putin, says Alaska belongs to Russia — or else.
Or else what? Or else war. Not with Ukraine. Not with Estonia. But with the United States.
Here’s Medvedev’s lunatic statement in its entirety: “According to a State Department representative, Russia is not getting back Alaska, which was sold to the United States in the 19th century. This is it, then. And we’ve been waiting for it to be returned any day. Now war is unavoidable.”
Medvedev is a former Russian president and prime minister; he was also known as a reformer back in the day. At present, he’s deputy head of the Security Council led by the former director of the Federal Security Service, Nikolai Patrushev. Although most liberal Russian analysts dismiss Medvedev as a drunk, he does belong in the Kremlin’s inner circle, and one has to assume that his views are not incompatible with those of Putin.
This isn’t the first time Medvedev has gone off the deep end in his Telegram posts. Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Medvedev has been threatening the West with nuclear weapons. On Jan. 26 of this year, the deluded Dmitry wrote that the “establishment of the Texas People’s Republic is becoming increasingly realistic.” On Jan. 24, he compared Ukraine’s “neo-Nazi elites” to pigs. On Jan. 22, he called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “the senior Ukrainian drug addict.” On Jan. 17, he told Ukrainians that Russia would wage war against them “forever.” On Jan. 12 it was the turn of the “impudent British,” “our enemies from time immemorial.” And on Jan. 3, he denounced the French as frog-eating “pederasts,” “Scum, bastards, degenerates.”
And amidst these loony outbursts, Medvedev didn’t forget to wish his readers a Merry Christmas on Jan. 6 (the equivalent of Dec. 24 in the Julian calendar) and include a photograph of the infant Jesus in a creche.
Is Medvedev mad or is he just playing to the crowd in the Kremlin or in the streets? In all likelihood, both. Only professional psychiatrists could provide a correct diagnosis. Others can merely wonder just what drove him off the cliff and transformed a mild-mannered “reformer” into a maniacal zealot.
Regardless of what ails the poor man, the fact of his ceaseless stream of insults and bizarre claims says something important about the nature of the Putin regime. Quite simply, it’s populated by brutes without any sense of decorum — or reality. It’s tempting to treat Medvedev’s claims on Alaska as a joke, but it’s hard to avoid the nagging suspicion that he, like his master in the Kremlin, really means it.
After all, an electronic billboard in Moscow displays a smiling Putin declaring “Russia’s borders do not end anywhere.” And back in July 2022, Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Russian parliament’s lower house, the Duma, said, “Let America always remember: there is a part of its territory that is Russia — Alaska.”
Now, it’s clear (one hopes) that Putin and his henchmen have no immediate plans to invade Alaska — or California, where Russia also established a few settlements in the early 19th century. But in talking about Russia’s right to Alaska, they are signaling to the world that their territorial ambitions have no theoretical limits. Ukraine today, Estonia tomorrow, and why not Alaska a few years later — especially if they seriously believe that Texas will secede and the United States will break up.
That these ambitions are preposterous goes without saying, but, given the alternate reality inhabited by Putin, Medvedev, Volodin and their comrades, it’s at least a decent bet that they truly believe what they are saying. And if they believe it, they are at least dreaming about transforming theory into practice.
Too many Western policymakers and analysts still fail to appreciate the degree to which Putin’s war and Russian behavior are a product of a deeply rooted imperialist ideology that enables Russia to expand limitlessly and demands that its elites actually pursue such an agenda. Forget NATO and its enlargement. Forget the European Union and its democratic values. Forget the United States and its overwhelming military power. Delusions of grandeur drive Russian policy, both at home and abroad.
Medvedev may be crazy. Putin, having spent so many years in the KGB and, more recently, so many months in his bunker, may be divorced from objective reality. But none of this means that their profoundly subjective and ideologically driven reality isn’t as real to them as Hitler’s crazed view of the world was real to him.
For Ukraine, Europe and the U.S., this means that Mother Russia’s delusional view of herself as innately great means that she will be amenable to reasoned discourse and negotiations only after being cured of her illness. Shock therapy — such as defeat in war — may be the answer. After that, a visit to the International Criminal Court may be advisable. Or a lobotomy.
Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”