Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday accused Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of shameful obedience to the United States and suggested he commit seppuku, Reuters reports.

It was the latest in a long line of shocking and provocative statements by Medvedev, once considered a Western-oriented reformer.

Medvedev is a key ally of President Vladimir Putin, serving as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and the body that oversees the defense industry.

He was reacting to Friday’s meeting in Washington between Kishida and US President Joe Biden, after which the two leaders issued a joint statement that read: “We state unequivocally that any use of nuclear weapons by Russia in Ukraine would be a hostile act against humanity”. and not justified in any way.”

Medvedev said the statement showed “paranoia” towards Russia and “betrays the memory of the hundreds of thousands of Japanese who died in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” – a reference to the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Japan to force surrender at the end of World War II.

Medvedev said that instead of asking the US to repent of this, Kishida shows that he is “just another one of the Americans.”

He stated that such shame could only be washed away by committing seppuku, a form of suicide by dismemberment, also known as harakiri. Kishida should commit seppuku during a cabinet meeting after returning from Washington, Medvedev added.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Medvedev repeatedly threatened that Western intervention in the crisis could lead to nuclear war, and called Ukrainians “cockroaches” in language that Kyiv considers outright genocide.

Putin said last year that the risk of nuclear war was growing, but insisted that Russia had not “gone mad” and viewed its own nuclear arsenal as a purely defensive deterrent.