President Donald Trump told reporters in Great Britain on Monday that he was "very disappointed" in Russian President Vladimir Putin over his failure to play ball on peace talks, noting that he would shorten a 50-day negotiating window and "make a new deadline of about 10 or 12 days."
The president later added, "And then we're going to put on tariffs."
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of the Russian Federation's security council and former Russian president, said in response, "Trump's playing the ultimatum game with Russia: 50 days or 10… He should remember 2 things: 1. Russia isn't Israel or even Iran. 2. Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country. Don't go down the Sleepy Joe road!"
The engagement between the two men online quickly devolved into talk of nuclear war and, on Friday afternoon, the dispatch of two nuclear submarines.
Grigorii Golosov, a political science professor at the European University in St. Petersburg, Russia, told the New York Times that Trump has targeted Medvedev rather than Putin online because he "wants to criticize someone in Russia" but is still hoping to make a deal with the current Russian president.
