Today, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called on Russians to mobilize to inflict “maximum harm“ on Western societies and infrastructure in response to the increasingly severe sanctions imposed on Moscow by the United States and its allies, Reuters reported, quoted by BTA.
“We must respond. Not only the authorities, the state, but also the people as a whole. After all, they – the United States and their (here Medvedev uses an uncensored epithet – ed. note) allies declared war on us without rules“, Medvedev wrote on his official channel on the social network “Telegram“, which has over 1.3 million followers.
„Every day we must try to inflict maximum damage on these countries that imposed these restrictions. To harm their economies, their institutions and their rulers. "To harm the well-being of their citizens, their confidence in the future," added Medvedev, who is now deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation.
Kiev and Kremlin critics have downplayed Medvedev's influence, portraying him as a kind of "scarecrow" whose task is to deter Western actions over Ukraine, Reuters notes.
In his latest comments, he spoke of the need to find weaknesses in the Western energy sector, industry, transport, banking and social services in order to increase public tension.
Western officials have already spoken of alleged Russian sabotage activities in the West, including arson, with some calling for the movements of Russian diplomats to be restricted. The Kremlin, which said today that it was considering retaliatory actions against the United States that would best serve Moscow's own interests, and the Russian Foreign Ministry have dismissed the allegations of sabotage as false.
At the same time, Medvedev, who has taken a “hawkish” position since stepping down as president, said that the information war against the West must be intensified.
“Are they screaming about us using fake news? Let us turn their lives into a complete and insane nightmare, in which they cannot distinguish between wild fiction and the realities of the day, hellish evil from everyday routine,” he wrote.
He also called on Russia to put weapons into space and arm the West’s adversaries after new US sanctions forced the Moscow Stock Exchange to stop using the dollar and euro in trading.
Other new US measures include measures against China-based companies selling semiconductors to Moscow, as well as increasing the “risk of secondary sanctions on foreign financial institutions involved in Russia’s military economy,” effectively threatening them with losing access to the US financial system.
Meanwhile, G7 leaders gathered for their annual summit in Italy and are likely to announce that they have agreed, at least in principle, on plans to provide loans worth $50 billion for Ukraine, using interest on frozen Russian sovereign assets.