What should be done when a senior politician of a significant global power openly insults the serving head of state of another country by referring to him as a “Nazi bastard” and calls for that head of state to be hanged?

That’s precisely what Mr Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president, prime minister, and current deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, did in a rant he recently published on social media. The target of his ire was Edgars Rinkevics, the President of Latvia, a small northern European state bordering Russia. And just in case anyone doubted his seriousness, Mr Medvedev not only accompanied his outburst with a gruesome picture of previous Russian public hangings; he also dismissed Latvia as a “non-existent” state.