The Kremlin says that everyone should be careful about nuclear rhetoric, in its first response to a statement by American President Donald Trump that he had ordered a repositioning of US nuclear submarines.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov played down the significance of Trump’s comments, saying it was clear that US submarineswere already on combat duty anyway.

He says Moscow had no desire to get into a polemic with Trump on the issue.

Trump said on Friday that he had ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in “the appropriate regions” in response to remarks from former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev about the risk of war between the nuclear-armed adversaries.