Japan Calls for Abolition of Nuclear Weapons on Hiroshima Anniversary: Russia's Nuclear Blackmail Undermines International Disarmament Efforts

Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida said that the situation with nuclear disarmament in the world is becoming increasingly complicated due to differences in the approaches of countries to nuclear arms reduction and Russia's threats to use nuclear weapons in a war against Ukraine.

He said this in a speech at a commemorative ceremony in Hiroshima to mark the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city, NHK reports, Ukrinform reports.

"The deepening split in the international community over the feasibility of reducing nuclear weapons, as well as nuclear threats from Russia, make the situation around nuclear disarmament even more gloomy," Kishida said. 

He stressed that Japan, the only country in the world to have suffered from an atomic bomb, will continue to do its utmost to achieve a world without nuclear weapons and intends to play a bridge in the dialogue between nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states.

"No matter how difficult the path to a world without nuclear weapons is, we simply cannot stop our movement towards this goal," the Japanese Prime Minister said.

This year's commemorative events in Hiroshima began with a minute of silence at 8:15 a.m., the exact moment when a US bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the city on 6 August 1945, killing about 140,000 people by the end of the year.

About 50,000 people, including representatives of 109 countries and the European Union, took part in the commemoration of the victims of the atomic bombing. For the third year in a row, Russia and Belarus were not invited to the ceremony due to the invasion of Ukraine.