Quote:Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chief of the Russian Security Council and former president, took an apparent satirical shot at U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday by saying the United States should become a “responsible superpower,” not a “refuge for the senile.”
“While the U.S. establishment wants Russia to collapse, Russia wants to see the United States a strong and smart country rather than a final refuge for those who are gradually slipping into senility,” Medvedev said in a post on the encrypted messaging platform Telegram, according to a translation by Russian news agency Tass.
Medvedev pushed back against U.S. sanctions against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by saying America should become a more “responsible” state that “seeks to solve its numerous domestic problems instead of undermining the development of other countries.”

Dmitry Medvedev. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Dmitry Astakhov, Government Press Service)
“All this is possible unless you believe that the U.S. president’s name is Volodymyr Zelensky and keep asking your aides if the correct spelling is Iraq or Iran,” he jeered, taking shots at the supposed dominance of American politics by Ukraine’s leader, and the current American president’s confusion of Iran and Iraq in his first State of the Union address, respectively.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in Brussels on December 15, 2021. (JOHANNA GERON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Medvedev, a loyal ally of dictator Vladimir Putin and his temporary puppet fill-in as president of Russia from 2008 to 2012, has been putting in overtime as the regime’s attack dog over the past few weeks. For example, he is one of the Russian mouthpieces most prone to threatening nuclear war if the Western world pushes Moscow too hard.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on February 10, 2022. (MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)
After the latest invasion of Ukraine began, and the first round of sanctions were imposed by Europe and the United States, Medvedev said it was time to break Russia’s diplomatic ties with the Western world and “padlock the embassies.”
“Russia has the might to put all our brash enemies in their place,” Medvedev boasted last Thursday.
On Monday, Medvedev penned an essay that denounced Poland as an “evil, vulgar and shrill critic of Russia” run by “imbecilic vassals” of the United States.
Medvedev ranted at the Poles as a nation of ingrates who “dream about forgetting” the “Soviet soldiers who defeated fascism and expelled the invaders from Polish cities” in World War II.
“The Fascist occupation is openly equated with the Soviet. It is difficult to come up with a more deceitful and disgusting rhetoric, but the Poles succeed,” he huffed.
“The interests of the citizens of Poland have been sacrificed to the Russophobia of these mediocre politicians and their puppeteers from across the ocean with clear signs of senile insanity,” he railed, previewing his later mockery of President Biden’s mental capacity.
Medvedev also insulted Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki for supporting “de-Russification of the Polish and European economy,” warning the Polish leader that defying Moscow “may be costly” and could sacrifice Poland’s “tranquility.”
Biden is scheduled to visit Poland on Friday, after attending a NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday.

Quote:The White House on Friday emphasized that the U.S. would not put any American boots on the ground in Ukraine, an administration spokesperson told Fox News on Friday.
The clarification comes after President Joe Biden's comments to a crowd of U.S. troops earlier in the day while emphasizing the might of average Ukrainian citizens.
"You're going to see when you're there — some of you have been there — you're going to see women, young people, standing in the middle, in front of a damn tank, saying, 'I'm not leaving,'" the president told the 82nd Airborne Division stationed in Jasionka, Poland.

The spokesperson later emphasized to the network that Biden has been against the deployment of U.S. troops since Russia invasded Ukraine.
"The president has been clear we are not sending U.S. troops to Ukraine, and there is no change in that position," the spokesperson said.
Before visiting Poland, Biden spent most of his week at an emergency NATO summit in Brussels discussing the West's response to the conflict.
The president pledged at the summit to welcome up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees and provide an additional $1 billion in food, medicine, water and other supplies, The Associated Press reported.
Meanwhile, a Pentagon official said that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is considering the deployment of additional U.S. troops to NATO's eastern flank, according to Fox News.
There are already 20,000 more U.S. troops in Europe than there were in January, bringing the total as of March 17 to 100,000, Fox News said.

Quote:From President Joe Biden's news conference in Brussels on Thursday, held after an extraordinary summit with NATO member states and before the president huddled with counterparts from the G-7 group of industrialized nations and the European Council, the major headline that emerged was his acknowledgment that Washington is leading an effort to eject Russia from the G-20.
"That was raised today," the president told reporters. "And I raised the possibility, if that can't be done — if Indonesia and others do not agree, then we should, in my view, ask [about] Ukraine being able to attend the G-20 meetings and observe."
Indonesia holds the rotating presidency for the G-20 and has balked at excluding Russia from the group gathering to be held in Jakarta later this year. The Kremlin has said Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to attend.

Yet the news conference was unusual for a number of other reasons. At one point, Mr. Biden effectively lost control of the proceedings, shouting and pleading with reporters to quiet down: "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa," he said. "Hold on a second! Please!"
He also appeared to grow visibly irritated when Christina Ruffini of CBS News asked: "Deterrence didn't work. What makes you think Vladimir Putin will alter course based on the action you've taken today?"
"Let's get something straight," President Biden snapped. "I did not say that in fact the sanctions would deter him. Sanctions never deter. You keep talking about that. Sanctions never deter." He went on to say that his whole point in convening the trio of summits with European and Asian allies was to persuade them, where the economic sanctions are concerned, to "sustain what we're doing not just next month, the following month, but for the remainder of this entire year."
That marked the first time the president has placed a potential end-frame around the sanctions activity targeting Russia's economy.
Biden also declined, when asked about former President Donald Trump, to leave domestic politics at the water's edge.
"The next election, I'd be very fortunate if I had that same man running against me," he said, before leaving the stage.
As if that were not unusual enough, the president, earlier in the news conference, had felt compelled to declare himself fit for the office.

"One of the things that I take some solace from," he said, "is I don't think you'll find any European leader who thinks that I am not up to the job."