Dear Friend --

Today is a scary and dark day, as Russia began an invasion of Ukraine.

This is a direct violation of international law and puts civilians at incredible risk. In addition to an illegal invasion, Putin threatened this morning to respond to any interference with “consequences that you never have had before in your history”, which really means that he’s threatening to use nuclear weapons.

We are in a really dangerous moment right now. ICAN strongly condemns the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons. War is never acceptable and Russian attacks on Ukraine, particularly using nuclear weapons, will have catastrophic consequences for people and their families, their lives and livelihoods, beyond borders.

I wrote about these risks in a piece in Politico today, and just a couple of weeks ago I met with Belarussian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya to talk about these risks and the need to strengthen international law and norms, including through the ban treaty.

The conflict could escalate to one involving nuclear weapons, and quickly. Last week, Putin conducted a strategic nuclear weapons exercise, practising dropping weapons of mass destruction on civilians with intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine launched missiles and bombers, continuing to escalate the situation.

You can read ICAN’s full statement here. 

As ICAN, we will be putting out more responses on our social media throughout the day and checking whether there are any further actions we can take in solidarity with those promoting peace. We urge you to speak out, to demonstrate, to ask people around you to condemn the violations of international law and support peace.

We are so worried for the lives of Ukrainians today and we hope that you will stand with us to do whatever we can to promote peace, disarmament and diplomacy as solutions.

Sincerely,

Beatrice Fihn
Executive Director
ICAN

It’s time to end nuclear weapons.

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