In the summer of 2010, then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev set off on a tour of Silicon Valley in search of investors and ideas on how to modernize his country’s resource-dependent economy. The young president, known for his love of technology, paid visits to Google, Apple, and Twitter in what the social media platform’s co-founder Biz Stone described as “one of the most special days in the history of Twitter.”
It was there that Medvedev sent out his first ever tweet. “Hello everyone, I’m now on Twitter and this is my6 first message,” he wrote in Russian, complete with a typo. These days, Medvedev tends to use Twitter and other social media platforms for shitposting about U.S. and European officials as well as making thinly veiled threats to attack the United States and wipe Ukraine from the map. In a post on Telegram on Monday, he said the United States should beg for Russia to restart arms control negotiations. “Let them run or crawl back themselves and ask for it,” he wrote.
