Japan criticizes Russian nuclear threat on anniversary of Hiroshima attack

nuclear weapons

Nearly 140,000 people died on August 6, 1945 and 74,000 in Nagasaki three days later

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has criticized Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons as the country commemorates the 78th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Nearly 140,000 people died on August 6, 1945 and 74,000 in Nagasaki three days later when US troops dropped nuclear bombs on the two Japanese cities just days before the end of World War II.

“Japan, as the only nation to have suffered atomic bombings in the war, will continue efforts towards a world free of nuclear weapons”

said the Japanese prime minister at a ceremony in Hiroshima.

“The path to achieving this goal is becoming increasingly difficult due to deep divisions in the international community over nuclear disarmament and due to the nuclear threat from Russia”

lamented.

“Faced with this situation, it is even more important to regain international momentum to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons”

Kishida added.

The Japanese head of government, whose family is from Hiroshima, insisted that the “devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused by nuclear weapons can never be repeated”.

Kishida’s comments echo those of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who released a statement on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. In the text, he criticizes that “some countries are recklessly wielding the nuclear saber again, threatening to use these tools of annihilation”.

“In the face of these threats, the global community must speak with one voice. Any use of nuclear weapons is unacceptable.”

highlighted Guterres.

At the Hiroshima ceremony, thousands of people, including survivors, relatives of victims and representatives from 111 countries (a record for the act), prayed for the dead and injured and asked for world peace.

However, for the second consecutive year, the Hiroshima government did not invite representatives from Russia or Belarus to the event due to the war in Ukraine.

The participants observed a minute of silence at 8:15 am local (20:15 GMT, Saturday), the time of the launch of the first nuclear bomb in a war.

Earlier this month, more than 100 medical journals across the planet issued a rare joint call to urgently eliminate nuclear weapons. The publications warned that the threat of a nuclear catastrophe is “great and growing”.

*With information from IstoÉ

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