The failure to agree on a joint statement after four weeks of talks and negotiations among 151 countries at the UN in New York is the latest blow to hopes of maintaining an arms control regime and keeping a lid on a rekindled arms race. The conclusion of the meeting was delayed for more than four hours due to Russia’s refusal to agree to a lengthy statement of support for the NPT, which included a reference to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is occupied by Russian forces near the front line in the south of Ukraine. East. Alarms were raised on Thursday when the plant was temporarily cut off from Ukraine’s electricity grid, but the connection was restored. Russian forces are reportedly planning to cut the plant off the grid permanently, raising concerns of potential disaster. A paragraph in the final draft text on Friday stressed “the utmost importance of ensuring the control by the competent authorities of Ukraine of nuclear facilities … such as the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.” The Russian delegation was the only one to speak out against the agreed text, but blamed the collapse of the conference on Ukraine and its “protectors”, calling the negotiations a “one-sided game”. After her statement, the Russian delegation left the UN room. The NPT was an agreement concluded in 1968 in which states with nuclear weapons promised to disarm while states without nuclear weapons promised not to acquire them. At the time there were five recognized nuclear powers, although Israel had secretly developed a weapon of its own by then. There are now nine states that possess nuclear warheads. Before the NPT came into force, some predicted that there would be dozens of countries with their own arsenals. It is the second five-year review conference that has failed to issue a joint statement recommitting to the treaty’s goals. It has been 12 years since there was even a partial agreement. But Sarah Bidgood, director of the Eurasia nonproliferation program at the James Martin Center for Nuclear Nonproliferation Studies, said the NPT was not irreparably violated and that any other country would have accepted the text. “The biggest takeaway for me is how far-reaching the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine has become,” he said. “Even in some of the darkest moments of the cold war, cooperation in support of the NPT was often strong. But what we saw in the final plenary today does not bode well for the future of nuclear diplomacy, including issues like arms control.” Beatrice Fihn, the executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, said the disarmament figures in the proposed text had already been reduced by all five official nuclear powers recognized by the treaty – Russia, the US, France, the UK and China. “So, in all honesty, I don’t think it makes much of a difference,” he said. “This is the very dangerous game that the nuclear weapon states are playing by constantly failing to achieve anything in this treaty. At some point, the non-nuclear weapon states will really begin to question whether or not this treaty is worth the effort and whether it is relevant.” Fihn argued that the continued failure of NPT review conferences to find common ground meant it was even more important for countries to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which seeks to ban them outright. It entered into force in January 2021 and so far 66 states have ratified or acceded to the treaty. “It’s going to be really important to move quickly with TPNW and get more states,” Fihn said. “It’s really an insurance that if [the NPT] continues to fail, that we are not standing with nothing.”
