WASHINGTON, June 27. /TASS/. The West is playing the nuclear roulette by prolonging the conflict in Ukraine, which threatens the world with a nuclear catastrophe, so it is crucial to turn an attentive ear to the latest settlement proposals made by Brazil and China, Ivana Nikolic Hughes, the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and senior lecturer in chemistry at Columbia University and Peter Kuznick, a professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, D.C. have said in a column for the portal Responsible Statecraft.
According to their estimates, NATO's policy of prolonging and escalating the conflict in Ukraine, including the permission to attack Russian territory with Western weapons, is bringing the world closer to nuclear war. The experts believe that Moscow's reaction to Kiev's recent attacks on Russian nuclear facilities was clear proof of this. "Russia has responded to these escalations with a series of explicit warnings about the imminence of a broader war and by carrying out provocative tactical nuclear war exercises on its territory bordering Ukraine," they recall.
According to the experts, the dynamics of the conflict indicates that the search for its political resolution is more relevant than ever before.
"Today's weapons could each kill and injure millions of people, and possibly hundreds of millions. Add to this count the billions around who would starve to death as a result of nuclear winter and subsequent crop failures and you have a recipe for the end of human civilization as we know it," the scholars warn.
Against this background, they call on the West to change policy on Ukraine and to stop the escalation before it is too late. In this context, the experts mention a joint statement by Brazil and China outlining a plan for resolving the conflict in Ukraine, which provides for countering its escalation and for "no expansion of the battlefield, no escalation of fighting."
"Continuing to play the nuclear roulette is not an acceptable path forward," they conclude.
On May 23, following a meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Brazilian Presidential Special Representative for International Affairs Celso Amorim, the two sides issued a joint statement saying that the sole way of resolving the conflict in Ukraine was through a dialogue and negotiations. China and Brazil proposed holding an international conference at an appropriate time with equal participation of all parties and discussion of all peace plans. They also noted the need to prevent the escalation of hostilities, the use of nuclear weapons, strikes on nuclear facilities, including nuclear power plants, and the endangerment of civilians.