Trump calls nuclear bluff of Russia's hawk-in-chief

Telegraph

a day ago

Normally, when the US acts against Russia, Vladimir Putin is quick to respond in kind: sanction for sanction, travel ban for travel ban, expulsion for expulsion.
'Proportional reciprocation' and 'symmetrical response' are staples of the Kremlin lexicon, usually accompanied by howls of outrage, denouncing Washington's provocations.
Yet since Donald Trump ordered two nuclear submarines to steam towards Russia on Friday – an unusually dramatic gesture for any US president and one that would typically signal a grave geopolitical crisis – Putin has been uncharacteristically silent.
Were Putin to follow his own doctrines of reciprocity, Russian submarines would now be heading towards the United States and the world would be holding its breath. Instead, he has recognised the obvious: Mr Trump's move is more about theatre than altering the US nuclear posture.
The president is playing a game all too familiar to the Russians. The Kremlin has been bandying about nuclear threats since even before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with none more loud than Dmitry Medvedev, Putin's clownish sidekick and chief social media warrior.
This week, Mr Medvedev, who was Russia's president from 2008 to 2012 and prime minister from 2012 to 2020, called the latest US deadline for Moscow to accept ceasefire talks a 'step towards war', and warned Mr Trump that Russia possessed nuclear strike capabilities of last resort.
It was this war of words that prompted Mr Trump to order nuclear submarines closer to Russia. In doing so, he has essentially called Russia's bluff and may well feel vindicated by the Kremlin's silence.
The outrage instead came from pro-Kremlin military commentators in the Russian media, with one accusing Mr Trump of 'throwing a temper tantrum' while another dismissed the submarine deployment as 'meaningless blather'.
But by swatting away Mr Medvedev's threats, the US president has given him a relevance he rarely enjoys – for all his mouthiness – either at home or abroad.
Hailed by European optimists as a pro-Western reformer when he took over as president from Putin in 2008, Mr Medvedev styled himself as a tech-loving moderniser and defender of civil liberties
In reality, he was never the champion of Russia's Western-oriented middle class that he pretended to be. He proved instead to be a mere placeholder while he helped Putin perform a constitutional sleight of hand that reset the clock on his presidency.
Ordinary Russians likened the charade to Gogol's play The Government Inspector, in which a fraudster impersonates a powerful official only for the real inspector to appear in the final scene. Cynical though it was, most Russians accepted the ruse.
Since Putin's return, Mr Medvedev has been sidelined, seeking relevance from the periphery by turning himself into an ever more bombastic caricature of his former self – one even Russians struggle to take seriously.
Last year, The Insider, an anti-Kremlin investigative site, reported that Mr Medvedev's most 'unhinged' social media posts often appeared shortly after deliveries from his Tuscan vineyard arrived at his Moscow address.
Rumours of Mr Medvedev's drinking have swirled for over a decade, growing louder as his fulminations against the 'bastards and degenerates' in Kyiv have intensified and footage emerged of him nodding off at a series of official events.
Alcohol might explain part of his transformation from a Western-courting politician to someone who now denounces Western leaders as a 'pack of grunting pigs'. But it is more likely that he simply craves attention – and Mr Trump has just given it to him, even if the US president describes him as a 'failed' has-been.
The real target of the submarine manoeuvre is almost certainly Putin himself – a man Mr Trump admires but has grown frustrated with because of his refusal to make concessions on Ukraine.
Matters are coming to a head, with Mr Trump vowing to impose sanctions on Russia and tariffs on countries buying its energy unless Moscow agrees to a ceasefire by Aug 8.
So far, Putin has remained unmoved, seemingly calculating that Washington will retreat from secondary tariffs, which would hurt Russia's energy-dependent economy but also carry significant diplomatic costs for Mr Trump.
With time running out ahead of the real showdown, the submarine move should be seen as an attempt to ratchet up pressure on Putin. In that light, the Kremlin's silence looks less like a triumph for the US president than evidence that the Russian leader has not blinked – yet.