Russia to Trump: We’re a real bear, not a paper tiger

Moscow gave Donald Trump a zoology lesson Wednesday, insisting that Russia is “a bear” and not “a paper tiger” on the geopolitical stage.

“Russia is by no means a tiger. Russia is traditionally seen as a bear. There is no such thing as paper bears. Russia is a real bear … There is nothing paper about it,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on RBC Radio.

The Kremlin official was responding to Trump’s overtly pro-Ukraine remarks, in which the U.S. president mocked Russia’s failure to win the war swiftly and said Kyiv could get all of its territory back from Moscow’s forces.

The rhetorical shift raised questions around the world over whether Trump has decisively changed posture on the Ukraine war, after months of wooing Russian leader Vladimir Putin and failing to hit Moscow with much-hyped massive sanctions.

Moscow brushed off Trump’s broadside, taking exception to the U.S. president’s remark that “Putin and Russia are in BIG Economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act.”

Peskov said that despite “certain points of tensions” due to Western sanctions following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia “maintains resilience and macroeconomic stability.”