The world is now in crisis, the risk of using nuclear weapons is very high, and what is happening in Ukraine and mutual threats are prompting a ban and elimination of nuclear warheads. This statement by Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi was published on the ministry’s official Telegram channel on the eve of the first meeting of states parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which will be held next week in Vienna, BB-CNTV reported.

“The current military conflict on the territory of Ukraine, talk about the return of nuclear weapons and mutual threats to use nuclear weapons make us, more than ever before, think about the collective vulnerability of humanity and the urgent need to ban and eliminate these deadly weapons,” the minister said.

He called on all countries of the world to develop a phased plan that would allow the complete elimination of nuclear weapons by the UN centenary—by 2045. According to Tleuberdi, the corresponding agreements could be reflected in the final documents of the first conference of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The Minister referred to the data of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who earlier said that about 13,400 nuclear warheads are now dispersed around the world, and the threat of their use has become “more real than in the darkest days of the Cold War.”

“Kazakhstan’s practical contribution to nuclear disarmament gives the moral right to continue calling on peoples and governments to redouble their efforts to rid our planet of the threat of nuclear self-destruction,” Tleuberdi stressed.

Having inherited a significant part of its nuclear arsenal after the collapse of the USSR, Kazakhstan voluntarily renounced the position of a nuclear power and in 1993 joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) with the status of a state that does not possess nuclear weapons.

The NPT was developed in support of the NPT and fully complements its current importance in strengthening the nuclear nonproliferation regime, the peaceful use of atomic energy and, in general, ensuring international security, the press service of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry specified.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into force in January 2021.