‘Nuclear Disaster’ Warning Issued by Analysts Over Ukraine War

The longer the war in Eastern Europe continues between Russia and Ukraine and the more provocations that occur worldwide, the closer the entire world becomes to “flirting with nuclear disaster,” two nuclear analysts warn in a new editorial.

It has been over 28 months since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, leading to a drawn-out conflict currently viewed by many in the foreign policy realm as a stalemate. Although the exact number of casualties remains unknown, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense estimates that Russia’s amassed roughly 535,660 dead soldiers compared to the 30,000 minimum soldiers lost by Ukraine.

In January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board (SASB) reset the worldwide Doomsday Clock and kept it at 90 seconds to midnight—representing no change in the perceived nuclear threats largely connected to the Russia-Ukraine war, but prompting further caution toward the “closest to global catastrophe” the world has ever been.

Ivana Nikolic Hughes, 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., co-authored a new piece in Responsible Statecraft—an online magazine of the Quincy Institute—cautioning of how increased military and governmental threats coupled with advanced weaponry could lead the world into a no-win scenario.

“It’s time to change policy on Ukraine and to stop the escalation escalator before it is too late. A Swiss peace conference without Russia or China has done nothing to advance that goal. Nor have the recent G7 meetings in Italy, the NATO pronouncements, or, for that matter, the grandiose war games being conducted by both sides in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.”

The pair added: “This is a good place to start, as would be an emergency meeting of world leaders that the U.N. General Secretary Antonio Guterres could call for. Continuing to play nuclear roulette is not an acceptable path forward.”