Officials have acknowledged the challenges Russia’s war in Ukraine will present at the review conference — which is normally held every five years but had been delayed for two because of the coronavirus pandemic — and the prospects for all sides agreeing on a document consent to the completion of the one-month concentration. In his remarks, Blinken noted that Russia had joined the other NPT nuclear powers — the United States, the United Kingdom, France and China — in a joint statement in January emphasizing the importance of avoiding nuclear war and arms races, but “the very next month, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.” “It is recklessly peddling dangerous nuclear weapons, with its president warning that those who support Ukraine’s self-defense ‘risk consequences the likes of which you have never seen in your entire history,’” Blinken said. Unlike in January, only three of the NPT’s nuclear powers — the US, the UK and France — issued a joint statement on Monday at the start of the conference, calling on Russia to “stop its irresponsible and dangerous its nuclear rhetoric and behavior, to live up to its international commitments and recommit — in word and deed — to the principles enshrined in the recent Leaders’ Declaration on the Prevention of Nuclear War and the Avoidance of an Arms Race,” it said in the one released in January. Blinken said Russia’s war violates the UN Charter, the rules-based international order and the Budapest Memorandum — the 1994 accord under which Russia pledged to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and Kyiv agreed to forfeit its nuclear arsenal. “What message does this send to any country around the world that might think it needs to have nuclear weapons to protect, to defend, to prevent aggression against its sovereignty and independence? The worst possible message,” he said. “And so it’s directly relevant to what’s happening here this month at the United Nations.” “More recently, we have seen Russia’s aggression with the seizure of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest such plant in all of Europe,” Blinken continued. “Russia is now using the plant as a military base to shoot at the Ukrainians, knowing they can’t and won’t fight back because they might accidentally hit a reactor or high-level waste in storage.” “This takes the idea of having a human shield to a whole different and horrific level,” he said. Blinken contrasted Moscow’s actions with those of the US, which he said sought to avoid escalation “by abandoning previously planned ICBM tests and not raising the alert status of our nuclear forces in response to Russian saber-rattling.” “There is no place in our world, there is no place in our world for nuclear deterrence based on coercion, intimidation or blackmail,” he said. Blinken also called out North Korea for its nuclear provocations, noting that “as we gather today, Pyongyang is preparing to conduct its seventh nuclear test.” The top US diplomat said that “Iran remains on a nuclear escalation path”. “Although publicly claiming to favor a return to mutual compliance with the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, since March Iran has been either unwilling or unable to accept the deal to achieve precisely that goal,” Blinken said. “Returning to the JCPOA remains the best outcome for the United States, for Iran, and for the world.”
