European Union politicians "secretly dreamed" about Russia's economic collapse, but any Russian default could turn into "both a moral, and quite possibly, material," default of the bloc itself, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned on Sunday.

"This is the deep strategy of the European Union, the secret intention of the masochists from Brussels and their partners in games from across the ocean [the U.S.]," Medvedev wrote in a post on the social media site Telegram.

"Their main meaning is no longer about the suffering of exhausted people, not about the end of a special military operation, not about the long-awaited peace in Ukraine, but about the default on Russia's obligations."

But "the financial system of the E.U. is not quite stable; people's confidence is falling. And it didn't shake so much even in the memorable year of 2008, and back then it was very difficult," he said, referring to the so called Great Financial Crash.

Medvedev was responding to comments made by European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen about the impacts of economic sanctions on Russia issued by the U.S. and European countries over the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine.

"Every week, sanctions are penetrating the Russian economy more and more: exports of goods to Russia have fallen by 70%, hundreds of large companies and thousands of experts have left the country, and Russia's GDP is projected to fall by 11%," von der Leyen told the BILD newspaper following her visit to war-torn Bucha in Ukraine.

"Russia's state bankruptcy is only a matter of time," she added. "With this war, [President Vladimir] Putin is also destroying his own country and the future of its people."

Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia's national Security Council, quipped that the EU should expect "powerful gratitude" from their citizens for hyperinflation, "which could no longer be attributed to the wicked Russians, for the lack of basic products in stores and for the influx of refugees, which will provoke a wave of violent crime worse than the Albanian one.

"Then the Brussels aunts and uncles will have to change their rhetoric. Otherwise, on the streets of well-groomed European cities, smelly bonfires made of tires will burn in honor of the heroes of the Maidan and the Great Peremoga over Europe!"

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