A post claiming the ex-Soviet nations of Georgia and Kazakhstan were “artificial” creations appeared Monday evening on former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s social media account — but was quickly deleted.
Medvedev aide Oleg Osipov said Tuesday morning that Medvedev’s account on Russian social network VK had been hacked, news agency Interfax reported.
Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Medvedev has undergone a public transformation into a political hawk calling for the dismemberment of Ukraine and labeling European officials “imbeciles.”
The post shared with Medvedev’s 2.3 million VK followers stated that, after seizing the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, Russia would seek to expand its borders in other areas.
And it claimed that the South Caucasus state of “Georgia had never existed before its reunification” with the Russian Empire in the 19th century and that Central Asia’s Kazakhstan was “an artificial state.”
Screenshots of the post showed it was viewed 2,000 times before it was taken down about 10 minutes after publication.
The post did not appear on Medvedev’s channel on messaging app Telegram, where the current deputy head of Russia’s Security Council regularly publishes anti-Western tirades to his 670,000 subscribers.
TV personality and former presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak was first to speculate that Medvedev’s account had been hacked.
“The rhetoric [in the post] is too much even for him,” she wrote on her Telegram channel late Monday.
Medvedev aide Osipov said those who carried out the hack would be punished.
VK’s administration said later Tuesday that the controversial post was published by a “third-party user” and said the social network’s security team was working with “competent services to identify the causes of the incident.”
“VK’s administration and [the relevant authorities] will deal with those who hacked the page,” state-run news agency RIA Novosti quoted Osipov as saying.
Medvedev served a single presidential term in 2008-2012, allowing Vladimir Putin to circumvent constitutional term limits. After an 8 year stint as prime minister, he was appointed to the powerful Security Council in 2020.
