UN Warns Against Nuclear Annihilation As Putin Disavows Possibility Of Nuclear War

After his government continued to make veiled threats over the months regarding the potential use of nuclear weapons in the Russia-Ukraine war, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to backtrack on Monday by firmly disavowing the possibility of nuclear war in the world.

In a letter sent to a conference of a nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Putin appeared to be reassuring the public that Russia would not be using nuclear weapons in its current conflicts, despite previous statements that appear to contradict this notion, according to Reuters.

“We proceed from the fact that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be unleashed, and we stand for equal and indivisible security for all members of the world community,” Putin said in the letter.

This new anti-nuclear war sentiment from Putin comes as U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres spoke at the same conference about the luck of the world to not have a nuclear conflict yet, and that one mistake or miscalculation could send the world veering into nuclear annihilation, the BBC reported.

“We have been extraordinarily lucky so far,” he said, before elaborating that “humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.”

Russia has been giving veiled threats implying the use of nuclear weapons should tensions escalate even further due to the Russia-Ukraine war, which U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned during his speech at the conference.

“What message does this send to any country around the world that may think that it needs to have nuclear weapons - to protect, to defend, to deter aggression against its sovereignty and independence?” he said. “The worst possible message.”

Among its many statements that hinted towards nuclear war was one during the day of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, where the country’s nuclear forces were put on high alert after Putin threatened the world that interference with the invasion would “lead you to such consequences that you have never encountered in your history.”

“Luck is not a strategy. Nor is it a shield from geopolitical tensions boiling over into nuclear conflict,” Guterres said, as he pointed towards the elimination of all nuclear weapons in the world.