Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s national security council and former president, didn’t mince words last week when he identified the U.S. as an enemy.

Medvedev said in an interview with Russian media outlets that Washington is a rival, but “today—let’s put it bluntly—they are our enemy. The United States of America is our enemy.”

The former president has been one of the most vocal critics of Western support for Ukraine and has warned that the nuclear threat is real. Like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Medvedev wondered why European countries are so willing to follow the U.S. blindly. But he said, unlike the Europeans, Washington is consistently trying to hurt Russia.

“They are trying to cause us as much damage as possible, and, where feasible, even tear our country apart and put Europe under their spell in the worst way so that it is unable to move at all,” he said, according to Tass, the Russian news outlet. “The reason is that sometimes, the leaders that come to power there start getting clever, either withdrawing from NATO or suspending membership or doing something else.”

EU countries are no longer an “independent subject of international law as they have simply become a cash cow for the United States at the expense of their taxpayers,” he said.

“And they are doing it not even for ideological reasons, but out of stupidity and cowardice,” Medvedev said.

TRENDPOST: Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin used the Nord Stream pipelines sabotage as an example of how European countries are generally fools for the U.S. (See “U.S. BLEW UP RUSSIA’S NORD STREAM REPORT: TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES” 14 Feb 2023 and “GERMANY ON HIGH ALERT: NORD STREAM PIPELINE AND NOW RAILWAY SABOTAGE?” 12 Oct 2022.)

Putin brushed off the recent New York Times report that laid blame on a “pro-Ukrainian group” with no ties to the U.S. or Kyiv for the September attack on the pipelines, and said the bullshit investigation is an example of Europe’s subservient position in relations with the U.S.

“The Europeans have lost a gene of independence, sovereignty, and national interest,” Putin said. “The more they [Americans] hit them on their noses or the top of their heads, the lower they bend and the broader they smile.”

Indeed, it is Seymour Hersh’s contention that Biden approved the strike in a desperate attempt to keep the Germans in the U.S. coalition against Russia, fearing that cheap Russian gas would be tempting for Berlin if it was a cold winter.