On August 1, the review conference of the countries participating in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) begins its work at the UN headquarters in New York.

This meeting is the tenth in a row.

The summit was originally scheduled to be held in May 2020, but was postponed by more than two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

US State Department Secretary Anthony Blinken will speak at the opening of the conference.

Events will continue until August 26.

The Russian side did not say in what format and with what composition it was going to take part in the forum.

On July 13, in an interview with Interfax, Director of the Department of International Organizations of the Russian Foreign Ministry Pyotr Ilyichev stated that some Russian delegates did not receive American entry visas, although applications for them were submitted in strict accordance with the requirements of the US authorities.

“The non-issuance or untimely issuance of visas to Russian delegates often leads to the disruption of our participation in intergovernmental events under the auspices of the UN.

This obviously negatively affects the activities of the World Organization itself,” the diplomat said.

As reported in the materials of the Russian Foreign Ministry, a review conference is convened every five years in order to monitor "the functioning of all provisions of the NPT, as well as agree on a list of recommendations to strengthen the Treaty."

Commenting on the RT conference starting in New York, Sergey Ermakov, a leading expert at the RISS Research Coordination Center, said that it was aimed at developing measures to preserve the NPT.

“Participants in the review conference should evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation of the NPT and develop certain measures so that the Treaty remains in force,” Yermakov explained.

Recall that the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was adopted in 1968 and entered into force two years later.

Initially, the document was temporary, but in 1995 it became indefinite.

The depositaries of the NPT are Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Currently, the number of states parties to the agreement exceeds 190.

  • UN Headquarters in New York

  • Gettyimages.ru

  • © fotog1

According to the text of the NPT, only five countries in the world have the status of a nuclear power: the Russian Federation, the United States, Great Britain, France and China.

Members of this club pledged not to supply their nuclear arsenals to other states and not to transfer control over them.

In turn, non-nuclear countries that adhere to the Treaty should not seek to develop and obtain nuclear warheads from abroad.

“To date, the NPT continues to work.

The importance of this document lies in the fact that this is one of the few treaties that continues to exist in the system of control of weapons of mass destruction, which has been practically destroyed by the United States, ”Ermakov emphasized.

"Nuclear Missions"

On the eve of the conference, the Russian International Affairs Council published an analytical material on the situation with the implementation of the NPT.

Its authors were MGIMO professor Vladimir Orlov and researcher at the Center for Political Studies of Russia Sergey Semyonov.

In their opinion, "the NPT is currently in a pre-infarction state."

As the scientists noted, even during the height of the Cold War, the participants of the review conference met "in a relatively more favorable environment for the nuclear nonproliferation regime." 

Orlov and Semyonov attributed the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), the Open Skies Treaty (OST) and the nuclear deal with Iran to the key factors that led to the degradation of the implementation of the document.

Also, Russian researchers drew attention to the problem of the proliferation of nuclear weapons and "sensitive technologies" for their own.

We are talking about plans to equip the Australian Navy with nuclear submarines and the so-called NATO joint nuclear missions, which de facto violate the first two articles of the NPT.

In a comment dated July 12, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the "joint nuclear missions" practiced by US troops with military personnel of allied countries directly contradict the provisions of the NPT.

As experts interviewed by RT explained, Moscow is categorically against expanding the geography of the presence of US nuclear arsenals in other states.

From the point of view of the Russian Federation, Washington is abusing the right prescribed in the NPT to deploy nuclear weapons abroad and in fact ignores the ban on transferring control over them to other states.

According to open data, the United States stores up to 20 B61 tactical nuclear bombs in Germany and, together with allies, conducts secret exercises on their operation.

In such classes, the extraction of ammunition from storage facilities and the placement of atomic bombs on aircraft are practiced.

Thus, military personnel of non-nuclear countries get a hypothetical opportunity to control air platforms designed to deliver nuclear weapons.

Against the backdrop of a special operation by the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine, discussions have also revived regarding the prospects for the deployment of US nuclear arsenals in Poland.

However, according to the Russian side, even now the United States keeps its nuclear weapons in six European countries - NATO members.

This information was announced on June 25 by Vladimir Putin at a meeting with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko.

According to the President of the Russian Federation, the United States stores 200 nuclear "tactical ammunition" in the European member states of the alliance.

257 aircraft have been prepared for their use, Putin added.

  • American nuclear missile Minuteman III

  • © defense.gov

Another fear of Moscow is related to the fact that Washington's nuclear weapons could be deployed in the countries of the Asia-Pacific region, for example, in Japan.

In addition, the Russian authorities negatively perceived the creation last year of a new defense alliance AUKUS (USA, UK and Australia), whose activities include equipping Canberra with a nuclear submarine fleet.

Orlov and Semyonov believe that within the framework of AUKUS, the US and the UK are creating "a dangerous precedent that is potentially attractive to Japan, South Korea and other US allies."

As Alexander Mikhailov, head of the Bureau of Military-Political Analysis, explained in a commentary to RT, there is a high probability that Washington and London will eventually share military nuclear technologies with Canberra.

“AUKUS is necessary in order to create as many military threats to China as possible.

In this pursuit, the US and UK can go very far.

The transfer of nuclear submarines means that Australia will at least learn how to handle military nuclear reactors.

It would be useful to recall the fact that any nuclear submarines are missile carriers on which nuclear warheads can be installed, ”Mikhailov emphasized.

Escalation risk

US authorities deny all accusations of violating the NPT.

On July 1, in a written statement timed to coincide with the 54th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty, State Department Secretary Anthony Blinken reaffirmed the US commitment to the points of the agreement and noted its "invaluable contribution" to global security.

Nevertheless, according to experts, in reality, Washington has a disdainful attitude towards compliance with the NPT, which noticeably aggravates the situation in the world.

In particular, according to analysts, US policy has largely contributed to the emergence of nuclear ambitions in the Kyiv regime.

Their public demonstration was one of the reasons for the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine.

Recall that during the Munich Security Conference, held in February 2022, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky announced the rejection of the country's non-nuclear status, despite participation in the NPT.

After that, in an address to citizens, Vladimir Putin said that the Kyiv regime has the resources to create tactical nuclear weapons and already now has a means of delivering ammunition with atomic warheads.

In addition, as the President of the Russian Federation stressed, Ukraine can receive technological support from abroad.

According to Alexander Mikhailov, if the special operation had not begun, then Washington could have provided all the necessary assistance to Ukraine in creating nuclear weapons.

“It is hard to imagine that the Kyiv regime would start building its own nuclear arsenal without the sanction and support of the United States.

It was beneficial for the Americans to turn Ukraine into a source of the maximum number of military threats to Russia, ”Mikhailov explained.

Sergei Yermakov also believes that the US policy created favorable conditions for the appearance of nuclear weapons in the arsenal of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the near future.

“Russia could not wait for Ukraine to get closer to returning its nuclear status.

If we talk about Washington's policy as a whole, then it is dangerous because it objectively lowers the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons and, accordingly, increases the risk of escalation to the level of a nuclear conflict.

Naturally, this largely contradicts the provisions of the NPT,” Yermakov concluded.