Do we like them?

Do we like Dmitry Medvedev?

Our score: 1 out of 10. A long, loud run of hostile rhetoric in his own words, and a thin early record of restraint on LGBTQ+ law, doesn't offset it.

Medvedev was Vladimir Putin's protege who became president in 2008. He was sold as the modern, more liberal face of Russia, pushing a modernisation drive and the Skolkovo tech hub. In 2011 he and Putin announced they would swap jobs, and from May 2012 he served as prime minister until the government resigned in January 2020.

For a while the liberal tag had a thin basis for LGBTQ+ readers too. In 2012, as prime minister, he said Russia didn't need a national ban on gay propaganda, and Lady Gaga publicly thanked him. But the federal law passed in 2013 anyway, and in 2014 he told CNN he'd barely heard of it being applied, while rights groups pointed to activists already fined.

Then the war. In March 2024 Novaya Gazeta reported him calling for Ukrainian independence to disappear forever. In 2022 and 2023 he invoked nuclear war if Russia were punished over Ukraine, and after the ICC's warrant for Putin he floated a missile strike on the court in The Hague.

The harm check is stark. That is the language of a man calling for a neighbouring state to be erased, and it's his own words rather than company he keeps. In December 2025 Ukrainian outlet Pravda reported he posted a string of insults at Zelensky on Telegram, and other outlets reported he wished him a 'happy last year'. That's a bloke using a state post as a troll account.

A 2017 Navalny film made claims about Medvedev's wealth. A Moscow court ordered it deleted after a suit by a billionaire named in it, per Meduza, and Medvedev cited the rulings as proof the claims were false. Navalny's side wasn't allowed to put the evidence to him in court. Where you land depends on whether you trust the Russian courts, and plenty outside Russia don't.

Lately he has sounded more mixed. Reuters has him saying in April that the US is unsuited to be a mediator, while in February he called Trump an effective leader who wants peace. Meduza's sources say he is tired of being a troll and wants back in the political spotlight, and the party then left him off the top of its list. Nothing there reads as a change of heart.