Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, launched a fresh personal attack on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Saturday, mocking her support for Ukraine and predicting Russian victory in the war. The post, published to Medvedev’s X account on August 8, 2026, at 10:00 AM, continues a pattern of inflammatory rhetoric the Kremlin official has directed at European leaders throughout the war.
The post read in full:
“Old hag Ursula has Ukrainian flags in her profile. Meaning she doesn’t give a shit about Europe – all that matters is the Banderite clique and sanctions. Because the EU is doing so well, right? Whatever the mad gynecologist says, Russia will surely win!”
The post takes direct aim at von der Leyen’s decision to display Ukrainian flags on her social media profile, a gesture of solidarity she and other European officials have used throughout the war. Medvedev framed the gesture as evidence that von der Leyen prioritizes Ukraine’s interests and continued sanctions on Russia over the wellbeing of the European Union itself, invoking the term “Banderite,” a reference to Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera that Russian officials frequently use to cast Ukraine’s government and its supporters as fascist sympathizers.
The reference to a “mad gynecologist” is a recurring jab from Medvedev, alluding to von der Leyen’s early medical career; she worked as an assistant physician in the gynecological department of the University Hospital of Hanover between 1988 and 1992 before entering politics.
Medvedev closed the post by declaring that “Russia will surely win,” a boast consistent with the Kremlin’s public messaging throughout the war, which has repeatedly downplayed the effect of Western sanctions and framed the conflict as one Russia is destined to win regardless of European or American pressure.
A Pattern Of Personal Attacks On Von Der Leyen
Saturday’s post is far from an isolated incident. Medvedev has targeted von der Leyen with insults for years, frequently using derogatory nicknames and mocking her physically and professionally. In July 2025, after the European Parliament debated a no-confidence motion tied to a COVID-19 vaccine procurement scandal, Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel that the “evil aunt-gynecologist” was facing a reckoning, adding that “the fate of Ursulka will be decided by the senseless and merciless European Parliament.”
That same month, following the EU’s adoption of its 18th sanctions package against Moscow, Medvedev called von der Leyen a “disgusting old hag” and branded Europeans “imbeciles,” writing that the sanctions would not change Russia’s position any more than the previous seventeen packages had.
Medvedev has also mocked von der Leyen over the EU-U.S. trade agreement reached in mid-2025, calling the deal “utterly humiliating” for Europe and again referring to her as a “raving old hag” who had bowed to pressure from Washington. Analysts and Kremlin watchers have long described Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012, as one of the Kremlin’s most aggressive online voices, regularly using social media to issue warnings, insults and, at times, nuclear threats aimed at Western leaders.
The EU’s Sanctions Campaign Against Moscow
The insults arrive against the backdrop of the European Union’s sustained sanctions campaign against Russia, now in its 21st package as of mid-2026. Von der Leyen has repeatedly framed the sanctions as an economic siege on Russia’s war machine, and in her statement introducing the 21st package in June 2026, she said Russia’s economy was “slowing sharply,” citing inflation near 6 percent, interest rates at 14.5 percent, and a sovereign wealth fund that had lost more than two-thirds of its liquid assets.
That same package proposed, for the first time, an EU entry ban on anyone who has served in the Russian armed forces since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. Von der Leyen said the measure was intended to ensure “Europe stays off limits for anyone who has participated in the invasion of Ukraine.”
Earlier, in unveiling the 20th sanctions package in February 2026, von der Leyen noted that Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine was approaching the 1,500-day mark, and that Russian forces had advanced an average of only 15 to 70 meters per day over the preceding year, seizing roughly 0.8 percent of Ukrainian territory despite what she called the heaviest casualty rate of any military offensive since the Second World War.
The 20th package also introduced a total ban on maritime services for Russian crude oil and added 43 vessels to the EU’s list of sanctioned “shadow fleet” tankers, bringing the total to 640, part of a broader effort to cut off the revenue streams funding Russia’s war effort.
Continued Fighting And Strikes On Civilian Infrastructure
Von der Leyen has repeatedly pointed to continued Russian strikes on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure as justification for the EU’s sustained sanctions pressure. In her remarks on the 20th sanctions package, she said the Kremlin was “doubling down on war crimes, deliberately striking homes and civilian infrastructure,” adding that energy facilities and heating systems had been targeted, leaving communities without power in freezing conditions.
Kyiv Post reported in early August 2026 that von der Leyen condemned a fresh deadly Russian strike on the Kyiv region as “horrible atrocities,” announcing that Ukraine would receive an additional 1.4 billion euros drawn from profits generated by immobilized Russian central bank assets, bringing the total transferred to Kyiv from that fund to eight billion euros. Source
The EU has frozen approximately 200 billion euros of Russia’s international reserves since the 2022 invasion, much of it held at the Belgium-based clearing house Euroclear, and has used the windfall profits generated by those assets to help finance Ukraine’s defense.
Kremlin Rhetoric Amid Peace Efforts
Medvedev’s latest broadside also comes amid ongoing, uneven diplomatic efforts involving the United States to bring the war to a close. The Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed the impact of Western sanctions, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov previously calling earlier rounds of penalties “useless” and insisting they would not alter Moscow’s strategic calculus.
Medvedev himself has been one of the most vocal Kremlin figures rejecting any concessions in the conflict. In March 2024, he declared that “Ukraine is definitely Russia” during remarks at a youth forum in Sochi, and said Moscow would continue its military campaign until Ukraine’s leadership capitulated, ruling out negotiations with the current Ukrainian government.
Ukrainian officials have consistently rejected such characterizations, maintaining that Ukraine and Russia are distinct nations and that Moscow’s invasion constitutes an illegal war of conquest. There was no immediate response from Kyiv or Brussels to Medvedev’s latest post as of Saturday.
Saturday’s post underscores the extent to which personal, mocking rhetoric aimed at European leaders has become a fixture of Russia’s public messaging strategy as the war grinds on, with Medvedev continuing to combine boasts of eventual Russian victory with dismissals of the sanctions regime that Brussels maintains is steadily eroding Moscow’s capacity to sustain the conflict.