In a recent column published by RIA Novosti, the deputy chairperson of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, writes that Russia’s relations with the United States have reverted back to a full “Cold War” (RIA Novosti, April 23). Medvedev served as Russia’s caretaker president from 2008 to 2012, holding the post while the country’s true ruler, Vladimir Putin, took the legally second-most-important national position of prime minister so as to bypass the constitutional ban on being able to run for president three times in a row. For obediently allowing Putin to return to the Kremlin as president in 2012, Medvedev was made prime minister for almost eight years. But in January 2020, Putin abruptly replaced Medvedev with Mikhail Mishustin, an energetic and bureaucratically savvy Federal Taxation Service director who effectively reformed the service. Medvedev was instead moved to a specially invented honorary post of deputy to President Putin in his capacity as chair of the Security Council. Though apparently lacking much real institutional power in his present position, Medvedev is a permanent member of the Security Council—Putin’s inner national security cabinet—and, thus, is privy to the decision-making process as well as the top-secret intelligence briefs supplied to this body. Medvedev’s opinion seems to be relevant and reflective of the consensus position of Putin and his inner circle.
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This picture taken on March 18, 2021, shows one of the Kremlin towers with a ruby star atop in front of the Russian Foreign Ministry headquarters.
