A top ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin taunted President Trump and slammed his new deadline for a cease-fire in Ukraine as “a threat and a step towards war.”
Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president-turned-Security Council deputy chairman, said Tuesday that Moscow will not abide by Trump’s call to end the war in Ukraine in 10 to 12 days, warning Trump that his threats could spark war between Washington and Moscow.
“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,” Medvedev wrote on X.
“Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country,” the Putin ally added. “Don’t go down the Sleepy Joe road!”
The message from the Kremlin comes a day after Trump announced that he was moving up his 50-day deadline for peace, demanding Moscow end its invasion within the next two weeks.
“I’m going to make a new deadline, of about 10 — 10 or 12 days from today,” Trump told reporters during his visit to Scotland. “There’s no reason for waiting. It was 50 days. I wanted to be generous, but we just don’t see any progress being made.”
The president has threatened harsh secondary tariffs against Moscow if it does not agree to a US-backed cease-fire, with Trump vowing to pump “billions of dollars” worth of weapons into Ukraine.
Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of cease-fire talks between Russia and Ukraine, which have undermined his campaign promise to end the three-year conflict on day one of his second term.
Russian officials have repeatedly scoffed at the deadline, with Moscow continuing to bombard Ukraine with hundreds of drones every night in assaults that have claimed civilian lives.
The latest overnight attack saw more than 300 drones and seven missiles fly into Ukraine, killing at least 21 people and wounding more than 80 others, officials said.
The majority of the deaths came after a Russian airstrike hit a prison in the Zaporizhzhia region, killing 17 inmates in an attack that Ukrainian officials condemned as a war crime under international conventions.
As Moscow’s attacks on Ukrainian civilians intensify, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, surmised that Putin is purposefully angering the West to drum up support for the war at home.
“Kremlin officials continue to frame Russia as in direct geopolitical confrontation with the West in order to generate domestic support for the war in Ukraine and future Russian aggression against NATO,” the ISW said.
With Post wires
