Former Russian President and current deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, Dmitri Medvedev, continued his harangue directed at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his December 20, 2024 Telegram post. Medvedev is a Russian nationalist and backer of Putin’s foreign policy, the cornerstone of which, as evidenced by the ‘Special Military Operation’ in Ukraine, is a revanchist grab for former Soviet territory in order reconstitute a greater Russia. His pugilistic demeanor as a propagandist toward this end matches his physical appearance – that of a bulldog – and it is helpful to remember that whatever truth or appearance of truth there may be in what he says, it is skewed, coming from a biased point of view.

Here, Medvedev is at his crudest as he depicts Zelensky first as a drunken, uncouth boor, then as an unwanted, illegitimate fetus.

Medvedev’s post begins below [translated from Russian by LOC]:

The president of a large country must be kind and proper to the extreme (and I know this from personal experience). Which Vladimir Putin, who radiated confidence and calmness, brilliantly demonstrated yesterday in the course of taking questions from a live audience.

And that’s why he’s President.

And here, paraphrasing Mikhail Bulgakov’s immortal determination, the vilest traitorous Nazi scum decided to show his composure in public insults. And, I dare assure you, not because his nerves gave out after the words of the Head of Russia about a duel of the ‘Oreshnik’ [intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile] in Kiev with western AA Defense. [Translator Comment: Medvedev is referring to 20th century Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov. The quote he paraphrases is from Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita: “Oh! An insult is the usual reward for good work,” answered Azazello, “are you really blind? But come to your senses quickly.”]

No. The insults were the middle finger (or, applicable to a given personality, his musical ‘organ’ for playing the ‘piano’), which the long overdue-to-be-ousted drug-addicted nit showed… Trump. [Translator comment: once again, Medvedev amuses himself at the expense of his target, President of Ukraine Zelensky, with a word game based on a metaphor: the ‘insults’ become giving ‘the middle finger,’ which becomes the musical ‘organ’ for playing the ‘piano.’ But he doesn’t spell ‘piano’ (fortep’yano); rather, he makes up a word, ‘fortep’yanakh’, which means something like ‘when heavily intoxicated/on a heavy drunk.‘] It’s like, there yuh go, no negotiations with Russia whatsoever, because, given such relations, they are impossible. You’ll keep giving money and weapons.

Such rhetoric liberates from the necessity to observe decorum. The President [i.e., Putin] yesterday said that negotiations with this creature are possible only in the case of its [meaning Zelensky’s] legal return to the post of head of state. [Medvedev keeps beating the drum that Zelensky is not legally the president of Ukraine. Although, technically, his 5-year term has officially ended, the Ukrainian constitution prevents presidential elections from being held during the war. Ipso facto, contrary to Medvedev’s claim, Zelensky will remain in the position of president until peace is re-established.] The preemie understands that this is unrealistic, and is betting on the war. But the unrestrained creep has also been mistaken here: no one needs him in the war and he won’t keep the chair long. History quite soon will cast him into a cesspool with the sewage, which will also swallow the nonentity in the suffocating miasma of oblivion… [Translator Comment: Medvedev’s intention is to impress on his readership Zelensky’s completely worthless existence – basically likening him to a full-term aborted fetus, conceived and born outside of wedlock (the actual meaning of the word that I glossed with ‘creep’) that no one needs, to be discarded in as filthy a manner imaginable, and not to be remembered. This will be Zelensky’s fate as well.]