The Russo-Georgian war, the most significant foreign-policy event of Medvedev’s presidency, began shortly after he took office. It marked Russia’s first entry into armed conflict with a European state since World War II. A Georgian attack on a Russian peacekeeping force in South Ossetia – a small unrecognised state on the Russo-Georgian border – provided the pretext for the war, which lasted only a few days, in August 2008. The subsequent actions taken by Russian army were described in Russian propaganda as an operation aimed at forcing Georgia to make peace. By the end of the war, Moscow had recognised the independence of both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another separatist region of Georgia. In addition to the severance of relations with georgia, the war triggered a drastic deterioration in Russia’s relations with the West. Georgia itself, though, quickly fell off the radar again.

The situation changed in late 2008, however, when the United States voted Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, into the presidency. By March 2009, Obama, seeking a fresh start to relations with Russia, had launched a policy that came to be known as the reset. One visible result of the thawing of relations between the two countries was the strategic arms Reduction Treaty (START III; START II having been abandoned in 2002); in signing this instrument, both sides demonstrated a willingness to refrain from the mutual threat of nuclear weapon use.

Medvedev’s period in office also saw a key phase in the talks on Russia’s accession to the world trade organization (Russia’s WTO membership did not become effective until after Medvedev left office). In entering the WTO system, Russia committed itself to abide by its standards, much to the annoyance of economic nationalists.

Several political analysts see Medvedev’s support of the USA’s position on the Libyan conflict as the cause of a public rift between him and Putin.

A short recap: civil war ignited in libya in early 2011. It was clear that airstrikes would give Muammar Gaddafi’s dictatorial regime the upper hand – if it could use them. But the Western states urged the UN Security Council to create a no-fly zone above Libya, and the Russia delegation, on Medvedev’s instructions, made no objection, despite Putin’s public calls for a veto of the relevant resolution. Gaddafi was subsequently overthrown, and Putin soon returned to the presidency.

The international economic crisis in 2008/2009 coincided with the start of Medvedev’s presidency. Thanks to the government’s strict financial policy, Russia was on its way to a fairly swift economic recovery, interrupted by the dramatic fall in oil prices in 2013 and imposition of sanctions due to the Ukraine crisis. Interestingly, Putin referred to the crisis in 2015/2016 – which was in many respects an internal Russia crisis – as “ours” far less frequently than Medvedev.

In the face of the international crisis, Medvedev spoke quite often about the necessity to modernise the country. Many took the word modernisation to be a modern translation of perestroika; some welcomed this, others were more wary. Medvedev spoke about democracy a lot more than Putin, as well.

In essence, this talk of modernisation involved the promise to create an innovative economy, privatise many state assets and actively develop the energy sector. In the end, only this last aim was realised – the oil and gas sector did in fact become one of the most innovative sectors, at least with respect to those aspects of the sector that permit innovation. 

In the minds of many Russians, the ideology of modernisation was closely entwined with Medvedev’s own enthusiasm for gadgets (the first iPhones had just hit the shelves), the internet and social networks. His detractors dubbed him the Twitter President for this reason, though his account was not a channel for a genuinely two-way flow of opinions or information.

In April 2009, Major Denis Yevsyukov, a senior officer in the militia, shot several people in a Moscow supermarket while intoxicated. Shortly thereafter, the Medvedev government initiated what was probably its most talked-about reform: that of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In reality, though, it was to essentially an exercise in rebranding – renaming the “militia” (militsiya) the police (politsiya). The reform had almost no effect on internal ministry structures, and in particular none on the so-called “stick system” – in which the performance of police officers is assessed chiefly on the basis of numbers of cases solved – which encourages police misconduct and abuse. Interestingly, Medvedev undertook a, far more successful, reform of the army during his time in office as well, but he almost never mentioned it.

After the release of Aleksey Navalny’s documentary “Don’t call him Dimon” in 2017, the name of Medvedev, by then prime minister, became practically a byword for corruption. All the more interesting, then, to note that Medvedev was the one who introduced the word corruption to the active presidential vocabulary. Words alone had almost no effect on the situation, though, at least not in the eyes of the urban-dwelling middle classes: the electoral fraud accompanying the 2011 Duma elections was seen by many as an example of political corruption. And it was the protests following these elections that made Navalny, who had previously fought against financial fraud in state-owned corporations, the leader of the opposition. Incidentally, Navalny’s name was never uttered publicly by either president.

The Russian president mostly talks about ukraine during crises – first in the context of the Orange Revolution in 2004, when mass protests prevented Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian-backed presidential candidate, from manipulating the election result. Then there was the Euromaidan protests of 2013–2014, to which Russia responded by annexing Crimea and supporting the separatists in Donbass. Russian state television has been calling Ukraine’s state sovereignty into question on a regular basis, so President Putin only feels the need to take up this issue himself during the peak of the crisis.

The 2014 annexation of crimea came as a surprise both to Russian society and to the international community. The official Kremlin rhetoric reflects this: the Crimean Peninsula was hardly ever mentioned before 2014. Although the plan for the annexation had been fully worked out some time in advance, the decision to actually implement it in February 2014 was intentionally not preceded by a propaganda campaign in Russia. Only once it had been annexed did Crimea become a key element in the image of Russia as portrayed by itself and by outsiders.

Despite the central importance of the annexation of crimea for Russia’s domestic and foreign policy, direct references to Crimea in the official rhetoric fell off quickly. While Crimea does not disappear completely from the Kremlin narrative, from 2017 its presence hovers around a low baseline level. By contrast, syria takes on paramount importance in Russian foreign policy, and references to the country become frequent in the official rhetoric.

For Russia, the crimean tatars remain the most difficult aspect of the annexation of Crimea. Their territorial claim to Crimea is closely linked to the memory of their deportation under Stalin and their return to the peninsula after 1991. In 2014, Crimean Tatars figured prominently among those protesting the annexation. They have since been a major target of Russian repression: Crimean Tatar organisations and media have been banned. It is therefore in Russia’s interest that the Crimean Tatars receive as little mention as possible in presidential speeches.

The war in the Donbas, which began in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea, is another topic that is rarely mentioned in Russia’s official rhetoric. In 2015 – i.e. with a certain time lag (the war began in the first half of 2014) – references to donbass, donetsk and lugansk, the main venues of the conflict, become somewhat more frequent, but they drop off again quickly. As the official Russian narrative still denies Russia’s involvement in this war, it is only logical that the region would not appear more than occasionally in the official rhetoric.

The Russian president also avoids references to “separatist[s]" and “separatism” in relation to the Donbas – not least in order to avoid drawing a parallel with the Chechen separatists, who once figured prominently in presidential rhetoric. When speaking of the Donbas, Putin tends to use another term instead, “people’s militias, which suggests a greater degree legitimacy from below.

In his first presidential term, the issue of pensions was the chief issue for Putin in area of social policy. A first pension reform was implemented but ultimately proved to be unsustainable. As in many other countries, pension reform is a thankless issue in Russia: Putin continues to speak of the issue, but with decreasing frequency. Once the 2018 pension reform legislation was adopted, he has almost never mentioned it – although surveys have shown that many Russian’s view it the most important thing happening on the domestic front.

The healthcare sector, by contrast, is a topic with lasting visibility. Although this is another area that has been subject to reform efforts for many years, healthcare reform will supposedly be tackled within the so-called national projects, making it inevitable that they should be mentioned more often in official addresses. Moreover, survey respondents regularly identify healthcare as the most important social policy issue.

Of the four traditional aspects of social policy – pensions, healthcare, poverty and unemployment – the last two are mentioned the least often in presidential addresses. This is the case despite the fact that one out of every eight people in the country was still living under the poverty line in 2019, according to official Russian statistics. If one goes by the population’s own estimates of their situation, this number is significantly higher. Average wages have also fallen noticeably from the peak they hit before the Ukraine crisis. Still, unemployment was only a frequent topic during the 2009 global economic crisis.

However, the boost in approval ratings associated with the annexation of Crimea did not last. Russia’s involvement in Syria met with less enthusiasm, and the end of the period of dynamic economic growth also had an adverse effect on Putin’s popularity. One way the state responded to this was to increase its crackdown on protest. At the same time, however, the ‘conservative shift’ is intended to continue contributing towards greater national cohesion and to justify distancing the country from the West. In 2019, Putin’s use of the word family hit a new record high.

In an attempt to distance himself from Putin, Medvedev sought to promote an image of himself as a leader dedicated to fighting corruption at the start of his presidency. And he managed to do so – at least in his speeches: Medvedev spoke about corruption in the four years of his presidency as many times as Putin did in 16 years. However, in reality, Medvedev himself has been accused of corruption – though there were never any legal consequences from the investigations along these lines by the Anti-Corruption Foundation of opposition politician Alexei Navalny.

It is interesting that Putin has taken up the public’s dissatisfaction with corruption and done more to exploit it to further for his own ends – for example, by using a broad anti-corruption campaign to boost his own popularity (as Xi Jinping has done in China, for instance). He has seldom mentioned the fight against corruption, especially in comparison to his use of terms like the fight against terrorism – even when corruption scandals continually make the news.

Apropos corruption scandals: Alexei Navalny (including in Medvedev’s case), the most prominent challenger of Vladimir Putin, has been exposing one after the other. Even when he is asked about navalny directly, Putin never utters his name, elegantly eluding all questions about the opposition leader.

In Russia, the term offshorisatsiya incidentally does not refer to the extraction of oil from beneath the oceans, but instead to the channelling of (illicit) funds to a ‘safe’ country abroad. Estimates put the amount of money funnelled out of Russia into foreign offshore accounts at over a billion US dollars. In no other country in the world is the percentage of assets belonging to the super-rich that are hidden in offshore accounts anywhere near as high as that in Russia, where it is about 60 percent. In 2013, Putin launched a deoffshorisatsiya initiative, aimed at bringing at least some of those assets back to Russia, with promises of a full amnesty in return. The initiative was not successful however, the target clientele apparently believing that their money was safer in the Caymans & co. than it would have been in the Russian Sberbank. And thus ended deoffshorisatsiya’s appearance in Putin’s linguistic repertoire.

The Russian language has two adjectives which, though closely related in meaning, denote very different things: russkii and rossiiskii. As English uses the same word, “Russian”, to express both of these concepts, English-language texts tend to make the distinction by including the relevant Russian-language word, unfortunately, often without providing further explanation. russkii denotes the Russian people in an ethnic-national sense, while rossiiskii has a civic dimension and refers to citizens of the Russian Federation, who may be ethnic Russians or belong to another ethnic group. This latter adjective is part of the country’s official name – Rossiiskaia Federatsia – which denotes an administrative entity with 85 federal subjects, two of which, the Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol, are not recognised under international law.

In 2016, Putin presented his concept of a “a multi-ethnic russian nation [rossiiskaia natsia] with a core of [ethnic-]Russian culture [russkaia kultura]” as a way to regulate relations between the state and the individual federal subjects and the different ethnic groups populating them. Putin’s initiative was intended to check growing Russian ethnonationalist tendencies in society. Unlike in the 1990s, however, ethnic Russian nationalism in this concept no longer merges into a supranational civic identity without any specific cultural content. Rather, it is intended to be the cultural glue holding together the fragile Russian (rossiiskii) multi-ethnic state.

The Chechen war is probably the reason that nationality policy did not figure particularly prominently in Putin’s speeches during his first two terms: it was a thorny issue to be avoided where possible. Not until the official end of the war in 2009 and Putin’s introduction of the concept of Russkii Mir did the intense debates about the role of non-Russian nationalities in the federal state begin. In 2012, President Putin devoted one of his seven programmatic campaign articles to nationality policy, thus bringing much higher prominence to the issue.

Putin did not begin to talk about “a [multi-ethnic] russian nation [rossiiskaia natsia] with a core of [ethnic-]Russian culture [russkaia kultura])” until his second presidential term (2004–2008). The aim was to create ideological safeguards protecting the Russian Federation from the fate of the Soviet Union, which ultimately broke apart along ethnic lines. In these years, however, Putin merely incorporated the idea of the state-building as “a [multi-ethnic] Russian nation [rossiiskaia natsia] with a core of [ethnic-]Russian culture [russkaia kultura]” into the public discourse, without giving the idea any particular prominence.

Then, in 2016, President Putin announced legislation on the “[multi-ethnic] Russian nation”  (rossiiskaia natsia). It was an idea that did not really take off. Some of the federal subjects in which the majority of the population is not ethnically Russian – notably Dagestan, Tatarstan, and Sakha (Yakutia) – did not see Putin’s idea as a supranational concept, but rather a threat to their own cultural foundations. It was already the case that more and more powers were being transferred from the regions to the centre, now they feared that a Russian-ethnic dominance would develop as well.

In The concept’s “core of russkii culture” is closely linked to the Russian Orthodox Church. orthodoxy constitutes an important resource of symbolic power for the Kremlin. Campaign managers ensure that Orthodoxy is a prominent topic in public discourse when Duma or presidential elections are coming up.

The spike in interest in islam in 2015 was mainly due to Russia’s military involvement in Syria, which is evident from the parallel spike in references to the islamic state (as in ISIS). However the frequent references to Islam also have to do with the intensified rhetoric relating to the “[multi-ethnic] Russian nation” (rossiiskaia natsia), in which multiple religions, as well as multiple ethnicities, allegedly coexist harmoniously.

Closely intertwined with the concept of nationality is the theme of identity, which has seen a steady increase in the last twenty years.

Throughout nearly the entire Putin era, the politically correct, ethnically neutral term rossiiskii narod (national population), which includes all citizens of the Russian Federation, has been the more prevalent. However, the term russkii made a remarkable comeback in the context of patriotic elation following the annexation of Crimea. The explanation for this is based on the Kremlin’s assumption that the russkii narod (Russian people) played a pioneering role historically: At a meeting of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights on 10 December 2019, Putin explained that the Russian (russkii) people itself developed from multiple, different peoples, mainly Slavic, but also Finno-Ugric. Putin’s logic here: the “Russian [russkii] people” with its own language and culture came into being from various ethnic sources, hence the (multi-ethnic) “people of the Russian Federation” has also to come into being in a similar process of ethnogenesis.