[input_sh]

Medvedev's not Putin, he's Putin's useful idiot, a provocateur, west's bogeyman.

The only time he makes the news in the west is when he mentions nuking some random European country, which for the record happens quite frequently.

You should never take anything he says seriously.

[throwawayq3423]

Medvedev being a puppet/idiot etc solidifies the fact that everything he says comes directly from his boss. He wouldn't say it otherwise.

[ajmurmann]

How is it useful to provoke your much stronger opponent when your own country has the GDP of Greece?

[seniorivn]

there is no point in comparing gdps here, what's important is what is the capability of war industry and armies are, and at the moment we can see that industries are not that far off, add nuclear weapons to the picture, and its draw, just as it was in the cold war.

[ajmurmann]

The overall GDP tells you what capabilities exist in total. Life of Russians is significantly more impacted in post because they are redirecting a much larger part of their economy. Let's also not forget that the cold war was with the Soviet Union and not just Russia.

[southernplaces7]

GDP is directly and strongly correlated to military industrial capability for sustaining a meaningful war effort. Modern history has shown this time and time again in many wars where enemies seriously applied themselves to pushing onward (I say this to exclude things like the Vietnam War, in which the U.S could have crushed the North but didn't have the political or social will do push it that far). Aside from its nuclear arsenal, Russia is economically and in terms of sustained war production no match for the NATO Alliance, even without the U.S. With U.S support, there's no chance. Putin himself even recently stated this, calling the idea of attacking NATO insane and specifically referencing his country's economic strength vs. that of NATO and the U.S.

Russia is just barely sustaining its war with Ukraine and the production capacity behind restocking destroyed and lost supplies. Never mind a war with NATO, unless they're willing to use nukes and risk utterly destroying themselves, and I don't quite think Putin is that insane. Even if he is, I don't think those surrounding him are, and their sycophancy would rapidly evaporate if faced with a real, immediate threat of their boss unleashing something that makes their decades of hard-stolen self-enrichment become irrelevant.

[input_sh]

Because he's not targeting the west, he's targeting semi-literate part of Russian population. He isn't giving statements like that on CNN, he's giving statements like that on TV programs that no educated person watches.

He's there to blow things out of proportion locally, he just happens to be translated from time to time for clicks. There's no significance to his words. He doesn't speak on behalf of Putin, he's not there to leak some super-secret internal plans for the future, he's just there to yap about how Russia can totally take over the entire Europe.

[seniorivn]

education has nothing to do with this, an average university professor in Russia(or for a matter of fact in the west too) is a radical supporter of the mainstream media