Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel warned Russia against the use of nuclear weapons on Saturday during a visit to Hiroshima, one of two targets of US atomic bombings.
• Read also: Ukraine: the Russian army says it does not plan to call up reservists
• Read also: [EN DIRECT] 31st day of war in Ukraine: here are all the latest developments
• Read also: Bombs on Kharkiv: “of course we are afraid, it falls almost all the time here”
Their warning comes as Moscow refused on Tuesday to rule out the possibility of deploying its nuclear arsenal, assuring that Russia could use it in Ukraine in the event of an “existential threat”.
As Fumio Kishida and Rahm Emanuel visited the Peace Memorial Park and its museum in Hiroshima, the American ambassador deemed Russia’s position “unacceptable”.
It is estimated that around 140,000 people died in the bombing of Hiroshima — and its fallout — on August 6, 1945. Three days later, Washington dropped a plutonium bomb on the Japanese port city of Nagasaki, killing around 74 000 people.
The United States remains the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons in a conflict.
Mr Emanuel issued a statement on Saturday condemning Moscow’s position. “The history of Hiroshima teaches us that it is inadmissible for a nation to make such a threat,” he said.
“We live in unprecedented times where Russia is threatening to use nuclear weapons, something that was once unthinkable, even unspeakable,” he added.
For his part, Prime Minister Kishida declared that “the horrors of nuclear weapons must never happen again”.
A few days after the start of the war launched on February 24 in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he was putting the “nuclear deterrent force” on alert, triggering a chorus of international protests.
The fears relate in particular to the possible use by Moscow of small-scale nuclear weapons.
“We have an internal security doctrine, it is public, you can read there all the reasons for the use of nuclear weapons. And if it is an existential threat to our country, then they can be used in accordance with our doctrine,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN on Tuesday.