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China and Brazil issued a joint statement on Friday, warning against threats to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.
The statement was made public at the UN headquarters during the high-level week of the General Assembly, according to an Ukrinform correspondent.
“We call on refraining from the use or the threat of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons and chemical and biological weapons,” reads the joint statement, joined by 10 other countries: South Africa, Turkey, Indonesia, Algeria, Bolivia, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Kenya, and Zambia.
According to the statement, “civilian infrastructure, including peaceful nuclear facilities and other energy facilities, should not be the targets of military operation.”
The signatories also called for maintaining a “comprehensive and lasting settlement by the parties to the conflict through inclusive diplomacy and political means based on the UN Charter”.
The text stops short of directly mentioning Russia, but the caveats refer to recent statements by Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who has again spoken out for the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his speeches this week at the UN Security Council and General Assembly noted that Russia was plotting attacks on Ukrainian nuclear power plants.
Earlier, he criticized the peace proposals put forward by China and Brazil, calling them destructive.
As Ukrinform reported earlier, China, Brazil and a number of countries from the so-called Global South agreed to create the “Friends of Peace” platform, within which they plan to contribute to the peaceful settlement of the “Ukraine crisis”.
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