MOSCOW, October 22. /TASS/. The current review cycle of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons has not brought the parties closer to reaching agreement on a final document, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said.
He said that the 11th Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference would be held in April-May 2026, which would conclude the next review cycle, although the previous two cycles ended without adopting final documents.
"Three sessions of the preparatory committee within the framework of the current review cycle have shown that we are not very close to reaching agreement on the final document this time," Ryabkov told a meeting of the webinar series "History and Modernity of the Russian Nuclear Policy and Public Diplomacy in the Nuclear Field," organized by the Center for Energy and Security with the support of The Presidential Grants Fund.
According to Ryabkov, there are several reasons.
"On the one hand, these are traditional disagreements between the supporters of an accelerated nuclear disarmament, no matter what, and the nuclear states. On the other hand, this is a contradiction between those who defend state sovereignty and those who are willing to sacrifice it to excessive demands of nuclear verification," he said.
"But there is another destabilizing factor - the inexorable desire of some countries to use the treaty for the purposes unrelated to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, namely to exert political pressure on the opponents, to assert their own political and geopolitical hegemony."
Russia’s priorities at the upcoming review conference
Ryabkov said it is naive to think about the potential consent of Russia or any other sovereign state to sign up to openly false and insulting accusations against itself or its allies to adopt a final document, which is an important component of the conference, but is not crucial for the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
"The Russian delegation at the upcoming conference will certainly do everything to ensure that the contradictions between the parties to the NPT do not undermine its foundations," he said. "We intend to work on possible solutions, however, a compromise in this situation is achievable only in conditions of mutual respect and consideration of the interests of all states."
Ryabkov said that those documents "that will not be built on these foundations are obviously not viable. We proceed from the fact that if the final document cannot be agreed upon, it will become the lowest common denominator, given the positions of all participants in the review process.".