UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday renewed his call for the global abolition of nuclear weapons amid growing concerns over Russia’s threat to use them in the Ukraine war.
“Decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we can again hear the rattle of nuclear sabers,” Guterres said at a special session of the General Assembly on nuclear disarmament.
“Let me get one thing straight – the era of nuclear blackmail must end,” he said.
“The idea that any country could fight a nuclear war and win is insane. Any use of a nuclear weapon would trigger humanitarian Armageddon,” he said.
“There can be no peace without the elimination of nuclear weapons.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a thinly veiled threat to use nuclear weapons in a speech last week after Ukrainian forces retook the country Moscow captured in its seven-month invasion.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken replied that Washington had informed Moscow, including through private channels, of the “catastrophic” consequences of the use of nuclear weapons.
Guterres expressed disappointment at the failure to reach consensus at a NPT review conference last month.
Russia blocked the outcome after the draft document backed Ukraine’s control of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, whose occupation by Moscow has raised fears of a major accident.
The United States condemned Russia’s stance. But no nuclear power backed a 2017 UN treaty that called for a comprehensive ban on nuclear weapons, with most developing countries backing it.
No country has used nuclear weapons on the battlefield except for the United States in 1945 when they destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 200,000 people. Imperial Japan surrendered days later, ending World War II.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged to work for “a world without nuclear weapons” in his speech to the General Assembly last week.
“The threat to use nuclear weapons, as Russia has done, let alone the actual use of nuclear weapons, is a serious threat to the peace and security of the international community and is totally unacceptable,” Kishida said.
