Reuters reports that Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former placeholder President and current deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, insists that Russia comes in peace:

We are not interested in a global conflict. We’re not crazy.

Dmitry Medvedev

My first thought when reading this was that Mr. Medvedev sounds unusually sober here. Is there some kind of Alcoholics Anonymous for the Russian government elite or did someone take over his accounts?

Aside: Back in the 2009-10 area I met my former high school teacher for lunch. He stated that he was encouraged that then-President Medvedev would be an improvement over then-Prime Minister and former President Vladimir Putin based on his early actions as President. I expressed my skepticism, beginning with the idea that Mr. Medvedev was functionally President at all (setting aside the whole affair in Abkhazia/South Ossetia early in the ultimately one-term Medvedev administration, but I think my former teacher may have blamed that on former President George W. Bush while buying into then-Obama-Biden Administration promised reset of relations with Russia). I’ll take my college self’s late “W” on that one, although I did not have on my bingo card that his role would eventually be “poasting” in such a manner as to make Mr. Putin look reasonable by comparison.