UN warns 'all of humanity' is at risk from heightened nuclear threat

UN warns ‘ALL of humanity’ is at risk from heightened nuclear threat levels amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

  • UN human rights chief warned humanity is at risk amid increasing nuclear threat
  • Michelle Bachelet slammed Russia’s attack on Ukraine in a speech in Geneva 
  • Russia’s Foreign Minister previously accused Western politicians of fixating on nuclear war, after Putin put the world’s largest nuclear arsenal on high alert

The UN human rights chief slammed Russia’s attack on Ukraine on Thursday and cautioned that heightened nuclear threat levels showed all of humanity was at risk from Putin’s invasion.

Speaking before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Michelle Bachelet warned that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched a week ago, ‘is generating massive impact on the human rights of millions of people across Ukraine.’

‘Elevated threat levels for nuclear weapons underline the gravity of the risks to all of humanity,’ she added.

Her comments, during an urgent council debate on the Ukraine conflict, came after Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday ordered Russia’s nuclear forces be put on high alert.

Earlier on Thursday, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Western politicians of fixating on nuclear war.

A building burns after shelling in Kyiv on Thursday as Putin’s bloody war continues

‘It is clear that World War Three can only be nuclear,’ Lavrov said in an online interview with Russian and foreign media.

‘I would like to point out that it’s in the heads of Western politicians that the idea of a nuclear war is spinning constantly, and not in the heads of Russians,’ he said.

Moscow has the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons and a huge cache of ballistic missiles which form the backbone of the country’s deterrence forces.

Bachelet’s speech came as UN figures showed the devastating week-old war had already forced more than one million people to flee Ukraine into neighboring nations, with countless others displaced inside the war-ravaged country.

Bachelet said her office had recorded 227 civilian deaths, including at least 15 children, but stressed that the real numbers were likely far higher.

Russian forces targeted a military base near Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 70 Ukrainian soldiers

A firefighter gathers up a hose amid rubble from a residential apartment block that was hit by a missile in Kyiv

A patrol walk past a burnt-out building in the town of Schastye after it came after the control of the Lugansk People’s Republic

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