President Trump’s attacks on NATO are pure political theatre ands the emergence of a militarised EU would be regarded a s greater threat to Moscow than the traditional Western alliance, warned one of Putin’s closest associates.

Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian President who is currently serving as deputy chairman for Russia’s Security Council, has made it clear he prefers an American-led Nato to a new European military alliance based on EU membership.

“Of course, neither Trump nor the US will withdraw from NATO. There is no justification for it, and Congress would never allow it,” he wrote on his Telegram channel, reported by Russian-state news agency Tass.

Trump on Wednesday warned that he was considering withdrawing the US from NATO and called European countries “cowards” for not helping to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has effectively shut the strait since the US and Israel began military operations in the country in March.

“I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way,” said Trump.

Medvedev on Friday called Trump’s remarks “pure grandstanding,” but said that move to reduce the US presence in Europe are possible.

Trump cannot unilaterally pull the US out of NATO. In 2023, the US congress passed a bipartisan bill preventing the US President’s ability to withdraw from NATO without congressional approval. The bill was co-sponsored by Trump’s current Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. “No U.S. President should be able to withdraw from NATO without Senate approval,” posted then-Senator Rubio who now seemed to have changed his mind.

“We’re going to have to reexamine the value of this alliance,” the secretary of state said on Fox News earlier this week.

Russia rethinks approach to EU enlargement

Medvedev, wrote that Russia’s approach to EU enlargement is changing due to recent attempts to expand the EU’s defence dimension. In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia was not opposed to Ukraine’s potential EU membership.

“It [the EU] could quite quickly turn into a fully-fledged military alliance that is extremely hostile to Russia, in some respects worse than NATO. It will be a repulsive rabble of rabid European parasites,” Medvedev wrote adding “it is time to abandon a tolerant attitude towards our neighbours joining a military-economic European Union.”

(bw)