Russia Doesn’t Plan to Join Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons – Lavrov

Sputnik – 19.01.2018

UNITED NATIONS – Russia does not plan to join the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday, stressing that Moscow shared a common interest in building a nuclear-weapon-free world but not using the methods, on which the treaty is based.

“Russia is not going to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. We proceed from the fact that the total elimination of nuclear weapons is possible only in the context of general and complete disarmament, in conditions of ensuring equal and indivisible security for all, including those who possess nuclear weapons, as stipulated in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [NPT],” Lavrov said speaking at a UN Security Council meeting.

According to the Russian minister, the provisions of the TPNW are “far from these principles.”

“It [the treaty] also provokes deep disagreements among members of the international community and can have a destabilizing effect on the proliferation regime. I want to emphasize that we share the goal of building a nuclear-weapon-free world but it should not be achieved with such one-sided methods, on which the TPNW is based,” Lavrov underlined.

The TPNW was adopted on July 7 at a UN Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons. It contains a set of prohibitions, including an obligation not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons. So far, the TPNW has been signed by 50 states, and ratified only by three — Guyana, the Holy See and Thailand. The US, Britain and China haven’t also joined the treaty.

In September, Mikhail Ulyanov, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control, said that the TPNW was contrary to Russia’s national interests and Moscow’s vision of how to move toward nuclear disarmament.