Russia warned against “nuclear rhetoric” on Monday after an online feud between President Donald Trump and Russian former President Dmitry Medvedev led to the U.S. deploying two nuclear submarines last week.
“Russia is very cautious about nuclear nonproliferation matters, and we believe everyone should be very careful about nuclear rhetoric,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a call with reporters.
“On the whole, certainly, we absolutely wouldn’t like to engage in such polemics, nor would we like to comment on that in any way,” Peskov said in response to a question about the deployment of the submarines.
What began as an online war of words between Trump and Medvedev escalated into nuclear brinkmanship on Friday when Trump said he had ordered the two nuclear submarines into “appropriate regions.”
Read more: Trump Escalates Nuclear Brinksmanship With Russia Over Social Media Spat
Tensions have been growing between the U.S. and Russia as Trump has grown frustrated with Moscow’s unwillingness to agree to his terms to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.
Trump issued a 50-day deadline for Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine in early July, to which Medvedev responded that Russia “didn’t care” in a July 15 post on X.
Trump picked up the feud in a Truth Social on July 31: “Tell Medvedev, the failed former President of Russia, who thinks he’s still President, to watch his words. He’s entering very dangerous territory!”
Medvedev then made a veiled threat to use a Cold War-era Soviet nuclear capability known as “The Dead Hand,” which allows Moscow to launch nuclear strikes even if humans who would usually issue the orders to do so had been killed in a first strike.
Trump reacted to the “highly provocative” statement with an order to deploy the submarines. “I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Friday. The President later told the press that the deployment was to “protect our people.”
The Kremlin appeared to seek to calm the mood on Monday, however. “There can be no winner in a nuclear war,” Peskov said. “This is probably the key premise we rely on. We do not think there is talk of any escalation.”
Together, the U.S. and Russia own more than 10,000 nuclear warheads, harboring nearly 90% of nuclear weapons across the globe. A single nuclear weapon in New York City could kill more than 580,000 people, according to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Trump has said that he would levy tariffs against Russia should they not broker a peace deal by the new Aug. 8 deadline.