Stop 'nuclear sabre-rattling', UN chief demands

Secretary General Antonio Guterres calls on countries 'to recommit to a world free of nuclear weapons'

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said 'humanity’s future is in our hands today'. Getty Images

The world is at a “maximum moment of danger” and all countries with nuclear weapons must make a commitment to “no first-use”, said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Monday, as he also called for an end to “nuclear sabre-rattling”.

The UN chief called for the same commitment to dialogue and reason that led to the deal that restarted grain and fertiliser shipments from Ukraine and Russia to be applied to “the critical situation” at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia, where continued shelling and fighting has raised fears of a catastrophe.

“Humanity’s future is in our hands today,” said Mr Guterres as he urged all countries “to recommit to a world free of nuclear weapons and to spare no effort to come to the negotiating table to ease tension and end the nuclear arms race, once and for all”.

The secretary general spoke at a UN Security Council meeting organised by China, which holds the presidency this month, on “promoting common security through dialogue and co-operation”.

Around the world, Mr Guterres said, collective security is being tested as “never before”, pointing to geopolitical divides, conflicts, military coups, invasions, lengthy wars and differences between the world’s great powers, “including at this council”.

He also cited “challenges that were unimaginable to our predecessors — cyberwarfare, terrorism and lethal autonomous weapons”.

“And the nuclear risk has climbed to its highest point in decades,” Mr Guterres said.

Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant attacked — in pictures

A bright flaring object lands near the nuclear plant in Enerhodar, Ukraine. AP

Russian forces shelled Europe’s largest nuclear plant early on Friday. AP

Surveillance camera footage shows a flare landing at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Reuters

The flare lands at the plant. Reuters

Multiple blasts at the plant were recorded. AFP

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy makes a statement following the attack. Reuters

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Enerhodar, Ukraine, on September 2, 2019. AP

A power-generating unit at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. AP Photo

The council meeting took place during the pandemic-delayed conference to review the 50-year-old Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which is considered the cornerstone of international disarmament efforts.

It is taking place against the backdrop of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warning after his February 24 invasion of Ukraine that Russia is a “potent” nuclear power and any attempt to interfere would lead to “consequences you have never seen”.

Earlier this year, her announced his decision to put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert.

Mr Putin has since said that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”, a message reiterated by a senior Russian official on the opening day of the conference on August 2.

The treaty sought to prevent the spread of nuclear arms beyond the five original nuclear powers — the US, Russia, China, Britain and France — and eventually achieve a nuclear-free world.

It requires non-nuclear signatory nations not to pursue atomic weapons in exchange for a commitment by the five powers to move towards nuclear disarmament and to guarantee non-nuclear states’ access to peaceful technology for producing energy.

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster 33 years on — in pictures

Pripyat is still a draw for visitors, not least for its Soviet-era architecture which has been frozen in time. All photos: Declan McVeigh / The National

Like thousands of other Soviet towns, Pripyat had memorials to the dead of the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War. This one is close to an abandoned nursery in the 30km 'dead zone' around Chernobyl.

This enormous Duga-1 OTH radar array – AKA the 'Russian woodpecker' for the interference it caused on shortwave radio – dominates the skyline of this remote part of northern Ukraine near Chernobyl.

Pripyat was once home to nearly 50,000 people; the city has been left to rot as Ukraine’s government still forbids people from living there.

An abandoned funfair in Pripyat.

Before the disaster more than 15,400 children lived in the city of Pripyat alone.

One of Pripyat’s 27 restaurants and cafes, left to the elements since 1986.

The UN says more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer were reported among children from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus up to 2005, 'most likely caused by radiation exposures shortly after the accident'.

Classrooms were abandoned as the Soviet authorities ordered people to leave the Chernobyl area. Residents were told they would be leaving for three days, but officials later decided the area would remain empty.

This nursery was one of 15 which educated almost 5,000 young children across the area.

The sarcophagus over reactor number four at Chernobyl was designed and built in 1986 to keep in 740,000m3 of radioactive debris and contaminated soil. In November 2016 the sarcophagus itself was covered in the €1.5 billion ($1.49bn) Chernobyl New Safe Confinement project.

A gas mask once worn by one of thousands of Soviet 'liquidators' - a mix of civilian and military workers sent to Chernobyl after the reactor explosion. More than half a million people took part in the clean-up.

The 30km exclusion zone around the site of the blast is dotted with reminders that it was once home to thousands of people. This nursery was abandoned on April 27, 1986.

Abandoned buildings in Pripyat remain officially out of bounds, but some people – a mix of former residents, villagers, adventurers and mere loners – have returned to live inside the 30km 'dead zone'.

Gustavo Zlauvinen, president of the treaty review conference, told the Security Council without naming any country that since February, “the NPT faces a raft of challenges, the diversity and scope of which are unlike anything that has come before”.

It should be no surprise, he said, that concerns have grown on the need for urgent action on disarmament.

Mr Zlauvinen, an Argentinian Foreign Ministry official, called “the norm” against using nuclear weapons one of the most important achievements of the post-Second World War era, but said that “it is increasingly threatened”.

He also said that the current global security environment revived the belief that nuclear weapons provide “the ultimate security guarantee”, calling this “an extremely damaging narrative and dangerous for non-proliferation”.

Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council “the international security system is experiencing a profound crisis” and trust between key international players at nearly all the institutions it is based on is at “a critically low level”.

For more than 200 years, he said, western countries have blamed Russia for everything.

Mr Nebenzia accused the US and its allies of “acting in the same reckless and provocative manner in Asia and Africa” as they are in Ukraine, and added “the reckless American scheme involving Taiwan is proceeding in the same vein”.

He said Russia had called for an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Tuesday on what he called Ukrainian provocations at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

He accused western countries supporting Ukraine of “essentially helping Kyiv in its attempts of nuclear blackmail” while ignoring shelling of the facility by Ukrainian armed forces.

Ukraine has accused Russia of using the plant as a military base and shelling it and its surroundings.

UN chief: 'Humanity one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation' — video

US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the council that one of the greatest threats to maintaining global peace and security is Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour and fellow member of the UN. She listed diplomatic efforts by the US and many other nations to prevent Moscow’s military action.

“Russia, however, rejected dialogue, discarded established views of sovereign equality, discarded the concept of indivisibility of security and launched a horrific war,” she said.

Ms Thomas-Greenfield took after Russia’s repeated saying that the security of one state cannot come at the expense of another, saying: “Russia’s tortured, full-throated messaging on the supposed threats it faces from its neighbours omits the fact that all nations have the right to choose their security alliances.”

New shelling reported at Ukraine nuclear plant — video