Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling amid the war in Ukraine has made the return of nuclear warfare “a real possibility,” according to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
“The threat to use nuclear weapons by Russia in its aggression against Ukraine has contributed to worldwide concern that yet another catastrophe by nuclear weapon use is a real possibility,” Kishida said during a visit to the headquarters of the United Nations in New York. “We should never tolerate the threat of the use of nuclear weapons, such as that made recently by Russia, let alone the use of nuclear weapons.”
Kishida’s condemnation reinforced a warning offered earlier Monday by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who declared that “humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.” And while China’s nuclear weapons buildup has emerged as an ominous new security risk for the United States and its allies, it was Russia’s aggression that haunted the U.N. conference.
“I believe that the threat of use of nuclear weapons in the context of the war in Ukraine [is] waking us up all [to the] the sense that the nuclear weapons didn’t go away, in any way, with the end of the Cold War,” Argentinean Ambassador Gustavo Zlauvinen, the president-designate of the U.N. conference to review the status of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. “They are still there. They are still presenting an acute danger to all humanity.”
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Putin’s repeated references to Russia’s nuclear arsenal exacerbated fears that the Kremlin chief might believe he can win a nuclear war, presumably through reliance on so-called tactical nuclear weapons. The intentional consternation has intensified as Russia has seized Ukrainian nuclear facilities, including the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant — a major site near the front lines of the fighting in Donbas.
“Russia is now using the plant as a military base to fire at Ukrainians, knowing that they can’t and won’t shoot back because they might accidentally strike a nuclear — a reactor or highly radioactive waste in storage,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during his appearance Monday in New York. “That brings the notion of having a human shield to an entirely different and horrific level.”
The U.N.’s top nuclear watchdog also put a spotlight on “the ongoing occupation” of that power plant, though he didn’t comment on the allegations that Russian forces are firing on Ukrainian positions from the cover of the plant. “The people of Zaporizhzhia and people far from Zaporizhzhia are relying on all of us to prevent war from causing a nuclear tragedy that would compound the catastrophe already befalling Ukraine and causing hunger and insecurity beyond its borders,” International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi said.
Kishida, the Japanese leader, likewise raised the problem of the Ukrainian nuclear plants. “The peaceful uses of nuclear energy should go hand in hand with nuclear safety,” he said. “The recent attacks on nuclear facilities by Russia must not be tolerated.”
Zlauvinen predicted that the Russian actions in Ukraine would be a dominant topic of closed-door conversations, not least because Kyiv was left vulnerable to Russian invasion due to Ukraine’s decision to surrender the nuclear weapons, which it possessed following the collapse of the Soviet Union, in exchange for security guarantees from Russia and Western states.
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“And it’s exactly what Russia violated,” the Argentinean envoy said.
