‘Temporarily occupied Poland and our Baltic provinces.’ Those were the words used, on Twitter, by Putin’s deputy and former Prime Minister of Russia, Dmitri Medvedev.
The remarks were made in response to French President Emmanuel Macron that Moscow has ‘already lost geopolitically.’ Medvedev railed that Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, have acted as a ‘vassal for the perverted whims of America” and argued that the Ukraine war has fuelled high inflation across Europe ‘in the process hurting its own economy and ordinary Europeans with masochistic lust.’ Medvedev was once Vladimir Putin’s right-hand man, undertaking a job swap between offices of President and Prime Minister for several years, but has long since been somewhat of a non-entity. He represented Russia at the 2009 marking of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and appeared in public seemingly under the influence of alcohol or other substances during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine starting February last year.
The reference to Poland as an ‘occupied’ country is more ambiguous. Although a former vessel of the Romanov Empire and a Soviet satellite state, Medvedev may have been alluding to the 10,000 American NATO troops stationed in the country, rather than any claim on the nation by Russia itself.