'Senile Biden' Risks World War III Over Cluster Bombs: Russia's Medvedev

Dmitry Medvedev has again railed at Joe Biden, disparaging the U.S. president's age, actions in Afghanistan and accusing him of "provoking nuclear Armageddon" with his support for Ukraine.

Medvedev was president of Russia between 2008 and 2012 during the Obama administration, when Biden served as U.S. vice president.

Now in the role of deputy chairman of Russia's powerful Security Council and a key ally of Vladimir Putin, Medvedev has used his Telegram account to take repeated swipes at the U.S. president. In April, he called Biden a "senile" and "desperate grandpa" after the U.S. president announced his candidacy for re-election in 2024.

Medvedev revisited the theme in his latest post on Saturday in which he mocked "sleepy senile Biden" for saying during a Geneva summit with Putin in 2021 that he had not agreed to Russian demands that Ukraine not join NATO.

He said that Biden had "shamefully fled from Afghanistan" and to "hide the shame, he ruined the economy of Europe." While it is unclear what Medvedev meant by that, his post did make clear his disdain for supplying Ukraine with "hundreds of tons of weapons."

"Now after exhausting all his resources, he promises cluster munitions," as well as the prospect of NATO membership for Kyiv, which if it happens, "means a Third World War."

Biden's decision to allow Ukraine to receive more cluster munitions has sparked criticism from human rights groups and some fellow Democrats because of the weapons' potential to indiscriminately injure and kill civilians.

"Why is he doing this?" Medvedev pondered, suggesting that the answer lay in it being the remit of "any American leader...to dominate and limit other countries, especially stubborn ones like ours."

"You could also say that he is a sick old man with severe dementia." Or, perhaps, as a "dying grandfather" he had "decided to leave gracefully" and so was "provoking nuclear Armageddon and taking half of humanity with him to the next world."

Medvedev has portrayed the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a proxy war between Moscow and NATO, which he has repeatedly threatened would spill over into a nuclear confrontation. Newsweek has contacted the White House for comment.

The issue of Ukraine's NATO membership and the alliance's backing for Kyiv is not just of Biden's concern but will be on the agenda at the bloc's summit in Lithuania starting on Tuesday.

Biden and his administration have remained committed to the alliance's current position that Kyiv would one day become a member of NATO but there is no clarity over when.

In June, Biden said that his administration would not "make it easy" for Ukraine to join the alliance and that the country must the same standards as other members.