By Andrew Osborn
(Reuters) – One of Russia’s top security officials on Thursday called on Russians to mobilize to inflict “maximum damage” on Western societies and infrastructure in revenge for increasingly harsh sanctions imposed on Moscow by the United States and its allies.
The statement by Dmitry Medvedev, vice-chairman of Russia’s Security Council and Vladimir Putin’s predecessor as president, came at a time when the West was drastically increasing sanctions against Moscow in an effort to degrade its ability to wage war in Ukraine. .
“We need (to respond). Not just the authorities, the state, but all our people in general. After all, they – the USA and their terrible allies – declared a war against us without rules!”, wrote Medvedev on his Twitter. official Telegram channel, which has more than 1.3 million followers.
“Every day we should try to cause maximum harm to the countries that have imposed these restrictions. Harm their economies, their institutions and their governments. Harm the well-being of their citizens, their confidence in the future.”
Diplomats say Medvedev gives a glimpse into the Kremlin’s hard-line and high-level thinking, although critics in Kiev and the Kremlin downplay his influence, casting him as an alarmist whose job is to dissuade Western action in Ukraine.
In his latest comments, he spoke of the need to find critical vulnerabilities in Western economies, to target energy, industry, transport, banking and social services, and to stir up social tensions.
Western officials have spoken out about suspected Russian sabotage activities across the West, including arson, with some calling for the movements of Russian diplomats to be restricted.
The Kremlin, which said on Thursday it was considering retaliatory action against the US that would best serve Moscow’s interests, and the Russian Foreign Ministry have dismissed the sabotage allegations as false.
‘FAKE NEWS’
Medvedev, who styled himself as a Western-friendly liberal during his 2008-2012 presidency before reinventing himself as one of the Kremlin’s toughest hawks, has spoken of the need to intensify an information war against the West.
“Are they shouting about the use of fake news? We will turn their lives into a mad nightmare, in which they cannot distinguish the wild fiction from the realities of the day, the hellish evil from the routine of life,” he wrote.
Medvedev also called on Russia to arm space and arm the West’s enemies, as new US sanctions forced Russia’s main exchange to suspend trading in the dollar and euro, obscuring access to reliable prices for the Russian currency.
Other new US measures included targeting China-based companies that sell semiconductors to Moscow and a move to increase “the risk of secondary sanctions for foreign financial institutions dealing with Russia’s war economy”, effectively threatening them with the loss of access to the US financial system.
Meanwhile, Group of Seven leaders were meeting at their annual summit in Italy on Thursday and appeared poised to announce that they had agreed, at least in principle, to plans to provide $50 billion in loans to Ukraine. , using interest from frozen Russian sovereign assets to support the multi-annual debt package.
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
