A statement by US President Donald Trump last Tuesday led to a climb of threats between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
Trump said the ten-day ultimatum he granted Russia dictator Vladimir Putin to reach a ceasefire agreement with Ukraine began that day-the deadline wins next Friday (8).
It is worth remembering that this period represented a major reduction of what Trump had stipulated on the 14th, when he said he would apply 100% rates on Russian imported products and secondary to the same level to Putin’s nations if a deal was not reached to interrupt the war with Ukraine within 50 days.
Russia’s Vice-President of the Russian Security Council, Dmitri Medvedev, who was president of Russia between 2008 and 2012 just because the Russian law at the time prevented Putin’s consecutive term (which he continued to send to Kremlin during those four years as Prime Minister), raised his tone on Thursday (31).
“As for the conversation about the ‘dead economies’ of India [que seria fortemente atingida pelas tarifas secundárias dos EUA] and Russia, and ‘get into dangerous territory’ – perhaps he [Trump] It should be remembered your favorite movies about ‘undead’, and also remember how dangerous the ‘dead hand’, ”said Medvedev on Telegram, in reference to a Russian program with the ability to automatically launch a nuclear counterattack.
The next day, Trump responded in the same (nuclear) coin in a post on the Truth Social Network.
“Based on the highly provocative statements of former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, now vice president of the Russian Federation Security Council, I ordered the positioning of two nuclear submarines in the appropriate regions, in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that,” the president wrote.
“Words are very important and can often lead to unwanted consequences. I hope this is not one of these cases,” he added.
Still on Friday (1st), Trump spoke again in an interview with Newsmax broadcaster. “The submarines are approaching Russia. We want to always be ready. I want to make sure that his words are just words and nothing more than that,” he said.
On the same day, Putin announced the beginning of the mass production of the new hypersonic Oreshnik missiles, which can carry conventional or nuclear warheads.
Of course, the world holds breathing when there is an exchange of threats between the two countries with the largest number of nuclear weapons on the planet – according to data from the NGO International Campaign coalition to abolish nuclear weapons (ICAN), Russia today has 5,449 nuclear warheads and the United States, 5,277.
However, among analysts, there is a certain skepticism, especially in relation to the Russian side, since since the war with Ukraine began in February 2022, Kremlin has already made other threats to use nuclear weapons and did not fulfill them.
In an article published on Friday, Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia program of the American Tank Tank Quincy for the responsible policy, said the statements of Medvedev and Trump “are pure staging.”
“Having abstained from the use of nuclear weapons in the last three years, Russia will obviously not release them in response to a new round of American sanctions – especially because it has successfully surpassed several previous rounds,” Lieven wrote.
The expert also stated that the position of American nuclear submarines is a “completely empty” threat because the United States already have “nuclear submarines capable of attacking Russia in permanent positioning.”
“Medvedev and Trump are trying to look tough to the internal audience. The rest of us, however, need not applaud this theater,” he said.
