Antonio Guterres urges nuclear-armed nations to maintain moratoria following Russian ICBM test
\n Johannesburg
\nUN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday urged all nations possessing nuclear weapons to maintain existing pauses on testing and to formalise global bans on nuclear explosions.
\n\u201cNuclear tests shatter trust, fuel a nuclear arms race & betray every community still living with the legacy of past nuclear tests,\u201d Guterres wrote on US social media company X.
\nHe urged countries to bring the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), a multilateral agreement intended to prohibit all nuclear detonations, into effect, while demanding a renewed commitment to ending the activities.
\nThe appeal followed an announcement from Russia on the training launch of a \u201cnuclear-capable\u201d intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
\nThe Russian Defence Ministry reported that the mobile solid-fuel missile was launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a military spaceport in the northwestern Arkhangelsk region, and reached its designated target at the Kura training ground in the Far East Kamchatka region.
\nMoscow confirmed that the launch was intended to confirm the \u201ctactical, technical, and flight characteristics of the missile system.\u201d
\nAlthough the CTBT was adopted in 1996 to establish a legally binding global ban on all nuclear test explosions, it has not officially entered into full legal force because a subset of key nations has not ratified the treaty.
\nThe activation of the treaty remains contingent upon ratification by all \u201cAnnex 2\u201d states, nations that possessed nuclear technology during the treaty\u2019s negotiation. Nine countries, including the US, Russia, China, Iran, Israel, Egypt, India, Pakistan, and North Korea, have yet to fulfil the requirement.
\nAs of 2026, 188 states have signed, and 179 states have ratified the treaty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Antonio Guterres urges nuclear-armed nations to maintain moratoria following Russian ICBM test Johannesburg UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday urged all nations possessing nuclear weapons to maintain existing pauses on testing and to formalise global bans on nuclear explosions. \u201cNuclear tests shatter trust, fuel a nuclear arms race & betray every community still living with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564627,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-564667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n