- Dmitry Medvedev says Moscow’s primary objective now is “inflicting maximum damage” on Ukraine.
- The Trump administration paused US military aid to Kyiv this week.
- There are Western fears that the suspension could hinder Ukraine’s vital fighting capabilities.
Russia’s former president, Dmitry Medvedev, said the Kremlin should press the attack on the battlefield as the US suspends arms supplies to Ukraine.
“Inflicting maximum damage to the enemy on the ground remains our primary objective today,” Medvedev wrote in a social media post on Wednesday.
Medvedev noted that President Donald Trump had on Monday paused American aid.
However, he said Ukraine’s disadvantage from the US aid pause would exist only for a limited time window.
“As soon as the deal is concluded, American arms supplies will likely resume (especially since Europe has already increased them),” Medvedev wrote.
"Russia is advancing," he added. "The enemy resists and is not yet defeated."
Medvedev, who was Russia's president from 2008 to 2012 and then its prime minister for eight years after, still holds a key position in the Kremlin's top military decision-making body.
He's now the deputy chairman of the Security Council, ranking behind only Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
The former president is no stranger to hawkish rhetoric toward Ukraine and the US, previously threatening nuclear attacks on Western cities if NATO deployed soldiers in Ukraine. He's also called for a "maximum reward" bounty on such troops.
His new post comes as Ukraine's air force reported that Russia attacked with three Iskander ballistic missiles on Tuesday, alongside Moscow's regular daily barrage of over 100 Shahed attack drones.
Russia's ballistic missile attacks are rarer than its drone assaults and typically come every few weeks. This time, it launched a salvo on the same evening as Trump's address to Congress.
In a report on the military's Tuesday operations, the Russian Defense Ministry posted on Telegram that it had attacked Ukrainian airfields, an oil depot, drone production workshops, and other military assets in 150 districts.
It's still unclear how Ukraine's warfighting capabilities might be affected by a loss of continued US support. But there are fears in Kyiv that the move will scupper the effective use of critical American weapons, such as Patriot air defense systems and HIMARS long-range artillery.
"My guess is if US aid does not restart, then Ukrainians could hold out two to four months," Mark Cancian, a senior advisor on defense and security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, previously told Business Insider.
The CIA's director, John Ratcliffe, and Trump's national security advisor, Mike Waltz, both said that the US had also rolled back the amount of intelligence it shares with Ukraine.
Analysts from the Institute for the Study of War wrote on Wednesday that losing US intel would hurt Kyiv's ability to find and hit Russian ammo depots and air defense systems, giving Moscow more options to strike Ukraine and allowing its pilots to get closer to drop bombs.
The move would also hurt Ukraine's chances of detecting incoming drone attacks so it can warn civilians and troops, they added.
"Russian forces exploited the previous suspension of US military aid in early 2024, including by trying to seize Kharkiv City in May 2024 before US military aid resumed flowing to Ukrainian forces on the frontline," the analysts wrote.
US military aid to Ukraine was paused for several months last year amid resistance from congressional Republicans.