A reckless comment yesterday by President Joe Biden, at a joint press conference with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida - that if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine, it would be an “act of hostility against humanity and unjustifiable” - provoked Russia’s former President, Dmitry Medvedev. After all, perhaps no one noticed, but didn’t these two countries have a nuclear history? Wasn’t this the US that dropped the only nuclear bombs in history - and wasn’t it on Japan’s civilians?
Medvedev, presently the Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, wrote today on Telegram that Biden’s statement causes a “hideous cringe… I will not even comment on the paranoia over the nuclear plans of our country.” Medvedev apparently is no longer surprised at the deafness in Washington as to Russia’s actually stated policy on the use of nuclear weapons. However, Kishida’s public acquiescence was too much.