Trump had been sparring with Medvedev on social media for several days.<\/p>\n
After the US president had reduced his 50-day deadline for Russia to end its war in Ukraine to less than two weeks, Medvedev posted that Trump was “playing the ultimatum game with Russia\u2026Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war”.<\/p>\n
Trump responded: “Tell Medvedev, the failed former Russian president who thinks he is still in power, to be careful what he says. He is entering very dangerous territory.”<\/p>\n
Medvedev’s next post contained a reference to “Dead Hand”, the automatic nuclear retaliation system developed in the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n
Clearly, that did not go down well with the White House chief.<\/p>\n
When he was Russia’s president, between 2008 and 2012, Medvedev was seen as a relatively liberal figure.<\/p>\n
“Freedom is better than no freedom” he was famously quoted as saying.<\/p>\n
But he has grown increasingly hawkish. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine he has gained a reputation for bombastic, anti-Western social media posts. Most of them have passed unnoticed, since he is not viewed as the voice of the Kremlin.<\/p>\n
Suddenly he has been noticed: by the President of the United States.<\/p>\n
And not just noticed. He’s got right under Trump’s skin.<\/p>\n
It’s one thing to dislike a social media post. We’ve all been there.<\/p>\n
But to dislike it so much you deploy nuclear submarines feels like overkill.<\/p>\n
So why has Trump done it?<\/p>\n
Here’s Trump’s own explanation from his interview with Newsmax: “Medvedev said some things that are very bad, talking about nuclear. When you mention the word nuclear my eyes light up and I say we better be careful, because it’s the ultimate threat.”<\/p>\n
But Medvedev has long been accused of nuclear sabre-rattling via social media. It’s nothing new.<\/p>\n
What is clear is that Trump took the recent Medvedev posts very personally, and reacted accordingly.<\/p>\n
Might there also be a strategy at play? Unpredictability feels like a big part of Trump’s way of doing things, in business and in politics; taking unexpected decisions that can put rivals and opponents off balance before talks or during a negotiation.<\/p>\n
On ending the war in Ukraine, for example.<\/p>\n
Surprise submarine deployments may well fall into that category.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trump had been sparring with Medvedev on social media for several days. After the US president had reduced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-311834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114959021767069365","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}