The Tenth Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was held on Aug. 1-26, 2022 at the UN Headquarters in New York City, but ended without a resolution. The NPT Review is held every five years, but was postponed from 2020 until now, due to COVID-19 restrictions.
The line in the major Western media is that Russia was the skunk at the party, because it objected to the sentence on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Russia did object to the sentence, with reason. The draft final resolution text carried the current NATO/U.S./Britain charge that Ukraine, not Russia, must control the plant. The draft stressed “the paramount importance of ensuring control by Ukraine’s competent authorities of nuclear facilities … such as the Zaporizhzia nuclear power plant.”
On that point, Russia, whose forces control the area where the plant is, has not endangered the nuclear plant, and has been using Ukrainian staff to reliably supply nuclear power to all in the region.
The Russian delegation spoke against the sentence, and at some point walked out of the proceedings.
Andrei Belousov, Deputy Head of the Russian Delegation at Closing Meeting of the 10th NPT Review Conference, explained the Russian position, as the impossibility of negotiating in the situation, because a number of nations politicized the conference. Belousov listed some of the reasons making the final document unacceptable, stating in his conclusion:
