With the angry drumbeat in Russian social media, for action on the June 1 attack on the airfields, growing louder and louder in the absence of official statements or substantial coverage on the central TV channels, Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chair of Russia’s Security Council and former President, issued a curt statement early on June 3, the highest-ranking person to allude to the airfield attacks that EIR has seen as this writing. The official, ominous, silence has been such that on the Great Game show on Channel One on June 2, Sen. Andrei Denisov, a former ambassador to China, delicately referred to “the events of yesterday.” Medvedev’s message, posted on his Telegram channel, was ice cold:
“To everyone who is worried and waiting for retribution. It’s right to worry—that’s what normal people do. Retribution is inevitable. But keep in mind:
“1. Our Army is pushing forward and will continue to advance. Everything that needs to be blown up will be blown up, and those who must be eliminated will be.
“2. The Istanbul talks are not for striking a compromise peace on someone else’s delusional terms but for ensuring our swift victory and the complete destruction of the neo-Nazi regime. That’s what the Russian Memorandum published yesterday is about.”
Irish journalist Gerry Nolan, founder of The Islander news Telegram channel, self-described as “a man with a big, stubborn dream: a just peace for our world,” understood the message. “When Dmitry Medvedev stops joking and starts speaking in bone-cold certainty, it’s time to read the runes and brace for fire,” he wrote, in a commentary entitled “Calm Before Inevitable Storm: Calm Words, Scary Kinetic Consequences.”
“The usually bombastic former president, known for his dark humor and trolling of Western leaders, has gone stoic. And that’s far more terrifying. In a terse statement following a week of Ukrainian terrorism and sabotage deep inside Russia: railway bombings, drone attacks on strategic military airfields from Murmansk to the Far East, Medvedev didn’t scream. He whispered,” Nolan continued. “Russia, he said, will ‘inevitably’ retaliate. No timelines. No specifics. Just inevitability.
“And that calm, that eerie quiet, is the sound before the Oreshnik storm....”
