Russian President Vladimir Putin’s security council deputy suggested on Thursday that the United States suffers from a phenomenon of American citizens “openly hating each other” in recent years.
“A division of values, I should say, even a civilizational split, has set in between different parts of America,” Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev told state media outlets. “It is not about the contradictions in their ideology so much as it is about them not listening to each other or even openly hating each other.”
Medvedev suggested that these divisions “could result in the collapse of the country,” according to a TASS paraphrase of his comments. The Kremlin official, who served one term as president under Putin, has developed a reputation for extreme rhetoric since Russia launched the full-scale war in Ukraine, but his remarks Thursday dovetail with Western assessments that Russian officials believe that their interests are advanced by acrimonious domestic political disputes.
“They don’t want to just compete with countries in the West,” former British Prime Minister Liz Truss, a senior British lawmaker, said in a Thursday appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of American conservatives. “They want our societies to collapse from within because we lose ourselves, because we hate ourselves. That’s what they are trying to achieve.”
Medvedev offered his assessment of U.S. civil society just days after the death of Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader and arch-Russian critic of Putin. Medvedev suggested that Navalny’s widow, Yulia, is “happy” about his death, as it gives her an opportunity “to kick-start her political career” as his successor.
“[Medvedev is] a nobody,” Yulia Navalny responded on social media. “They are deliberately shoving this bastard at you so that you can blow off steam at him. Write about Putin’s murder of Alexei. Write every day. As long as you have the energy.”
Alexei Navalny was arrested in 2021 on the grounds that he had violated his probation by failing to check in with Russian authorities while recovering from an assassination attempt. He returned to Russia from Germany, where he had received treatment for the poisoning.
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“I am a Christian … and that helps me a lot in my activities because everything becomes much, much easier,” Alexei Navalny told the court in his closing remarks, according to a Rights In Russia translation. “There are fewer dilemmas in my life. … And so, while certainly not really enjoying the place where I am, I have no regrets about coming back or about what I’m doing. It’s fine because I did the right thing. On the contrary, I feel a real kind of satisfaction. Because at some difficult moment, I did as required by the instructions and did not betray the commandment.”
Medvedev added that he “can’t say anything good about” Alexei Navalny and downplayed the potential significance of his supporters. “If there are supporters [of Alexei Navalny], well, one should reckon with it, but do not exaggerate this factor. The country is living in a different way now,” he said, per TASS. “No one is fighting him now, which is understandable because the man is no longer there.”
