Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government has threatened to expel all European Union ambassadors in the latest diplomatic aftershock from dissident Alexei Navalny’s death in an Arctic prison.
“Ambassadors of Western, NATO countries, spend all their time doing only one thing,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Tuesday, per state-run Tass. “First, they interfere in our country’s internal affairs. Second, they have literally been staging performances which, too, have something to do with interfering in Russia’s internal affairs.”
Zakharova issued that rebuke during an interview with another state media broadcaster who framed the discussion, according to Reuters, with the question, “Should the EU ambassadors be sent out” of the country? The controversy arose after Zakharova’s team claimed that European ambassadors turned down a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, just days after multiple Western diplomats attended Navalny’s funeral in Moscow or marked his death at makeshift ceremonies elsewhere in Russia.
“In reality, all these ambassadors should be kicked out of Russia, and the level of diplomatic relations should be demoted,” Dmitry Medvedev, the Kremlin Security Council deputy chairman and a former Russian prime minister under Putin, wrote Monday on social media. “These are not ambassadors, but political imbeciles who do not comprehend their real tasks.”
Medvedev concluded the message with the phrase, “Europa mortua est,” meaning “Europe is dead.” It was hardly his most provocative statement of the day, as the Putin deputy declared earlier Tuesday that the “concept” of an independent Ukraine must be eradicated.
“One of the former Ukrainian leaders said once that Ukraine was not Russia,” Medvedev said, per a Tass translation. “This concept must disappear forever. Ukraine certainly is Russia.”
Medvedev also claimed “the territories on both banks of the Dnieper River,” referring to the river that bisects Ukraine.
“All our adversaries should understand this simple truth firmly and forever: The territories on both banks of the Dnieper are an inseparable part of Russia’s strategic historical borders, so all attempts to forcibly alter them, to cut them off, are doomed,” he said.
Medvedev delivered his bellicose address in front of a map of Eastern Europe that depicted a dismembered Ukrainian state, shorn of vast territories seized by Russia or parceled out to neighboring NATO alliance states such as Poland, Hungary, and Romania.
“Some people say NATO is no longer necessary while the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia stands in front of a huge map of the planned imperial conquest of Eastern Europe,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis wrote on social media.
Medvedev occupies an unusual space in the Russian system. By title, a senior Russian security leader, he is widely perceived as lacking real power inside the system. And Ukrainian officials have not hesitated to taunt him over his long-rumored fondness for alcohol in response to his various bellicose statements. His ambiguous place in the Russian diplomatic landscape was on display Monday, as pro-Ukrainian wags on social media compared his unusual blue suit to a photo of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and suggested that she “wore it better” than the truculent Russian.
“He’s playing this crazy role at the moment [to persuade Western officials] that Putin isn’t the worst one, and there’s an even more crazier guy,” a senior European official said before adding that Medvedev’s map actually undermines that idea. “Because Putin wants the whole [of] Ukraine, not giving the western part to Poland.”
One of Russia’s top intelligence officials amplified the idea that Ukraine should be broken apart on Tuesday by insisting that Russia will continue its invasion until “we have liberated everyone who wanted to be liberated” from the central government.
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In parallel, independent Russian media outlets reported that Russian authorities “detained at least four people who attended memorial events dedicated” to Navalny. And another anti-war activist noted that Tuesday is the 71st anniversary of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s death.
“People are giving into despair, but it’s a mistake,” activist Vitaly Ioffe said in a video translated by SotaVision. “One died. The other one will die, too. … Spring will come.”
