Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president, warns that Moscow’s confrontation with the West will last decades and that the conflict with Ukraine could become permanent.

Medvedev, once seen in the West as a liberal modernizer, has emerged as one of Russia’s most “outspoken” hawks since Moscow launched a “special military operation” in Ukraine last year, Reuters writes.

Now deputy head of the Security Council, his views reflect some of the thinking at the highest level of the Kremlin, according to Russian officials.
In an op-ed for the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta, he said tensions between Russia and the West were “much worse” than during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world was on the brink of a nuclear conflagration.

A nuclear war was “very likely” but also unlikely to have winners, said Medvedev, who has repeatedly said Western support for Ukraine increases the chances of a nuclear conflict.

In the same interview he refers to the sharp differences over Ukraine, the direction of humanity and the way the world order is structured. “One thing politicians of all stripes do not like to admit: such an Apocalypse is not only possible, but quite likely,” Medvedev wrote.

Western analysts see what they say is Medvedev’s “nuclear rattle” as a tactic aimed at scaring the West into reducing military support for Ukraine and prompting Kiev to open peace talks with Moscow.