At a meeting of the UN Security Council, United Nations Secretary- General Antonio Guterres demanded a halt to “nuclear saber-rattling”, adding that the world is “at a maximum moment of danger” and all countries with nuclear weapons must make a commitment to “no-first use”, the BTA reports. “The commitment to dialogue and reason that led to the recent deal restarting grain and fertilizer shipments from Ukraine and Russia must be applied to the critical situation at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant at Zaporizhizhia in Southeastern Ukraine, where continued shelling and fighting in the area has raised fears of a nuclear catastrophe”, said Antonio Guterres. The council meeting was organized by China which holds the Presidency this month. “Humanity’s future is in our hands today”, Antonio Guterres added and urged all countries to “recommit to a world free of nuclear weapons and to spare no effort to come to the negotiating table to ease tensions and end the nuclear arms race, once and for all.”

Seeking a way out of the deepening conflict, Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan, who visited Ukraine last week, said that during the negotiations in Lviv, he offered Turkey as a host location for a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva, said that possible negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv woyld not lead to a solution to the conflict. In an interview for Financial Times, Gatilov said that there would be no direct talks between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a Senior Adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, told France Presse that Kyiv had rejected all types of compromises and that Russia should leave all occupied Ukrainian territories.