TOKYO, August 8. /TASS/. The United Nations will not be able to respond in any form to a potential nuclear conflict, because in case of a global nuclear war there will probably be "no UN, able to respond anymore," Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told journalists in Tokyo.

"I believe that if nuclear weapons will be used, there is probably no UN, able to respond anymore," he said, answering to a Japanese reporter’s question about a possible UN response to a hypothetical use of nuclear weapons by Russia in Ukraine.

The UN chief also said he was certain that a nuclear war would mean "the destruction of the planet."

In this regard, he called upon nuclear powers to commit to the no-first-use principle and to refrain from using nuclear weapons to threaten non-nuclear states.

"It is clear that if nobody uses it [nuclear weapons] for the first time, there would be no nuclear war," he said.

Russian Ambassador to Japan Mikhail Galuzin told a nuclear disarmament roundtable in Tokyo last week that Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has nothing to do with scenarios of possible use of nuclear weapons and all allegations on this matter are mere speculations. He recalled that only one country - the United States - had actually used nuclear weapons and their use was not justified from the military point of view but "actually was a nuclear weapons test" in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their residents.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a special military operation following a request for help from the leaders of the Donbass republics. He stressed that Moscow's plans did not include an occupation of Ukrainian territories, its goals being the demilitarization and denazification of the country. In response, the West began to gradually introduce sweeping sanctions against Moscow and to supply weapons and military equipment to Kiev estimated at billions of dollars.