AND THE CHILLS CONTINUE:  Apparently not to be outdone by the war talk out of North Korea, the Russkies have now added their own touch.  What strikes me is that sabre rattling, where the sabres are nuclear, is now becoming routine.   The danger is that people will start seeing it as normal, and we then will wonder what the next step up will be.  Think about that.  From Fox:

Dmitry Medvedev, the Deputy Chairman of Russia's Security Council, suggested on Monday that the Kremlin could fire a hypersonic missile at the International Criminal Court (ICC) after the organization issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

"I’m afraid, gentlemen, everyone is answerable to God and missiles," Medvedev, a staunch Putin loyalist who was also Russia's president from 2008 to 2012, wrote in a message on Telegram, according to Russian state media outlet Tass. 

"It’s quite possible to imagine how a hypersonic Oniks fired from a Russian warship in the North Sea strikes the court building in the Hague. It can’t be shot down, I’m afraid."

The Russians are sometimes accused of being heavy-handed.  I wonder why.

Medvedev also warned the judges to "watch the skies closely," calling the court "a pathetic international organization."

The ICC issued the arrest warrant for Putin on Friday, alleging that he is "responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation."

Another warrant also targeted Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation. 

As many as 16,226 children have been deported during the 13-month-long war, according to Ukrainian human rights chief Dmytro Lubinets.

President Biden called the warrant for Putin's arrest "justified" over the weekend, saying that he has "clearly committed war crimes." 

Other Russian officials brushed off the warrant by the ICC, which Russia does not recognize. The U.S. and China also were not signatories of the 1998 Rome Statute, which established the court's authority. 

Medvedev has a history of making profane predictions, including that civil war will break out in the U.S. in 2023 and that the defeat of Russia in a conventional war could "provoke the beginning of a nuclear war."

Earlier this month, he referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the "head Nazi," despite the fact that Zelenskyy is Jewish. On Friday, Medvedev called Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a "ba-----" after a Russian fighter jet collided with a U.S. reaper drone over the Black Sea. 

COMMENT:  Hot words are too often followed by hot action.  We should not shrug and dismiss Medvedev's remarks as simply rhetoric.  Things are getting very tense internationally, and we have not heard the latest from China and Iran, two other gems of colorful speech. 

I have to believe that some of this recent bomb-talk is a result of America's weakness.  There does not seem to be any penalty applied by President Biden, and power, as they say, abhors a vacuum.

By fall we will be seriously into the 2024 election festival.  We will watch carefully what words are used by the candidates of both parties toward our foreign enemies.  Backbone is needed.  But it can't be bought at Walmart.

March 21, 2023