Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has today warned the West that trying to break the country up is a 'chess game with death' ending in 'doomsday for mankind'.
Russian Security Council deputy secretary Mr Medvedev said it was the 'dirty dreams of Anglo-Saxon perverts' to use war in Ukraine to 'paralyse' the invading nation.
He said the US and their wanted to 'shred us into pieces', in a comparison to the break-up of the USSR in 1991, signalling apocalyptic consequences of a 'forceful disintegration of a nuclear power'.
Nuclear weapons were the most effective way of keeping Russia safe, he said.
Former president and Russian Security Council deputy secretary Mr Medvedev (pictured) said it was the 'dirty dreams of Anglo-Saxon perverts' to use war in Ukraine to 'paralyse' Russia as he warned of 'doomsday' consequences
The West had widely seen Mr Medvedev as more liberal than his mentor President Putin (pictured) but he has recently tried to appear tougher to win favour
Dmitry Medvedev warned of 'doomsday for mankind' if the West try to disintegrate Russia. Pictured: The launch of the Russian intercontinental ballistic missile 'Sarmat' on Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Arkhangelsk region, Russia, in April this year
Mr Medvedev served as Russia's president in 2008-2012 when term limits forced president Vladimir Putin to take the role of prime minister.
The West had widely seen him as more liberal than his mentor President Putin.
But in recent months he has sounded much tougher than most hawkish Kremlin officials in an apparent attempt to curry favour with the president.
After attending today's farewell ceremony for former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Mr Medvedev published a post on his messaging app channel.
It referred to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and accused the US and its allies of trying to engineer Russia's break-up.
He alleged that some in the West would like to 'take advantage of the military conflict in Ukraine to push our country to a new twist of disintegration, do everything to paralyse Russia's state institutions and deprive the country of efficient controls, as happened in 1991'.
Mr Medvedev made the comments on a messaging app today after attending the farewell ceremony for former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Pictured: Dmitry Medvedev attends a memorial for ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at the the House of the Unions in Moscow
He wrote: 'Those are the dirty dreams of the Anglo-Saxon perverts, who go to sleep with a secret thought about the break-up of our state, thinking about how to shred us into pieces, cut us into small bits.
'Such attempts are very dangerous and mustn't be underestimated. Those dreamers ignore a simple axiom: a forceful disintegration of a nuclear power is always a chess game with death, in which it's known precisely when the check and mate comes: doomsday for mankind.'
Mr Medvedev concluded by saying that Russia's nuclear arsenals are 'the best guarantee of safeguarding the Great Russia'.