Trump escalates nuclear threat against Russia - Submarines as a signal in the Ukraine crisis

Donald Trump has once again left the world holding its breath. Amid escalating tensions between Washington and Moscow, the US president declared on his Truth Social platform on Friday that he had “moved two nuclear submarines” into “appropriate regions” - in response to apocalyptic threats from former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. It is a step that raises the rhetoric of the Ukraine war to a new level although it remains unclear whether actual military movements have taken place or whether the president primarily wanted to send a political message. Trump justified his decision with the need to respond to Medvedev’s “foolish and extremely dangerous statements.” “Words are very important and often lead to unintended consequences. I hope this will not be one of those cases,” the president wrote. The remark came after Medvedev had urged the US government on his X channel to imagine the post-apocalyptic scenario of the series “The Walking Dead,” referring to the Soviet “Dead Hand” system - an automatic nuclear second strike that would guarantee the destruction of the enemy even in the event of the elimination of the Russian leadership.

Nuclear submarines are among the most closely guarded elements of the US military. Whether they were actually repositioned will be almost impossible to verify. A senior Western military official with experience in submarine warfare explained that Trump is in any case seeking psychological dominance: “The Russians have to decide whether to believe him - the uncertainty is part of the deterrence.” It is striking that in this escalation Trump is for the first time since taking office directly playing the nuclear card. While the Ukraine war has been raging since 2022 and President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened to put his nuclear forces on alert, the United States has so far been restrained in public nuclear warnings. The timing is remarkable. Trump initially gave Russia a 50-day deadline to begin serious peace talks with Ukraine. But instead of rapprochement, Moscow intensified the attacks - most recently on the night of Thursday with a devastating strike against Kyiv in which more than 30 civilians were killed. The president responded by drastically shortening the deadline, announcing new “secondary sanctions” against buyers of Russian oil such as China, India and Turkey, and now putting a possible nuclear demonstration on the table. “We must be careful,” Trump said as he left the White House for Bedminster. “A threat has been made, and we must protect our people.”

Which submarines Trump means, he left open. The United States has both nuclear-powered attack submarines that track enemy ships and submarines, and large Trident submarines equipped with ballistic intercontinental missiles. The latter generally do not need to be repositioned because they can reach targets thousands of kilometers away - any movement risks revealing their position. The Pentagon refused any comment and referred to the White House. Medvedev, now deputy head of the Russian Security Council, has in recent years become the Kremlin’s loudest hardliner. His martial social media posts are notorious: sometimes marked by biting mockery, sometimes by open threats of war. Whether his recent outbursts were approved in Moscow or served primarily his own self-promotion is unclear. In Washington, however, they had an effect. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Medvedev “not a real decision maker,” but emphasized that his words had to be taken seriously as a provocation. From Kyiv, presidential adviser Andriy Yermak reacted much more sharply: “He is very stupid. Maybe he was drunk.”

Trump used the heated atmosphere to also publish new casualty figures that paint a grim picture. According to his statements, Russia has lost 112,500 soldiers since the beginning of the year, almost 20,000 in July alone. Ukraine has also suffered heavily, with around 8,000 killed, plus missing persons. Official and independent confirmations of such figures are lacking, but they underscore the tone Trump has chosen: uncompromising, threatening, ready to escalate. It is a dangerous game. Already in 2018 Trump publicly boasted about nuclear weapons, then against North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, whose “small button” was supposedly outdone by Trump’s “much bigger and more powerful” one. In the end, these provocations led to meetings but not to disarmament. With Russia, the situation is far more delicate. Here, two nuclear powers face each other, whose strategic doctrine is based on deterrence and mutual destruction. That Trump now indicates he is positioning submarines signals less an immediate risk of war than an attempt to gain the upper hand in a psychological duel. But the more often the red line is invoked, the greater the risk that a verbal confrontation will eventually become reality.

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