Russia Opposes France’s Plan to Deploy Nuclear Bombers in Europe

The Kremlin said it opposes France’s proposal to deploy its nuclear bombers across Europe as a means of deterrence.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday reiterated Paris’s openness to deploy its nuclear arsenal via warplanes across Europe as an alternative to that of the US.

In response, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that the move “won’t contribute to security, predictability and stability.”

“The proliferation of nuclear weapons on the European continent is something that won’t contribute to security, predictability and stability,” Peskov said, according to Russian state media TASS.

“Now the entire system of strategic stability and security is in a deplorable state for understandable reasons,” he added.

Tensions between Europe and Moscow have reached an all-time high since the Cold War after the latter launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Macron on Tuesday said France, the only nuclear-capable nation within the EU, is open to starting discussions on providing a Europe-wide nuclear umbrella soon, a notion he brought up in March.

Macron said “Russia has become a threat for France and Europe” at the time, citing Moscow’s threats, as well as the uncertainty of future US backing, to be the reason for Paris’s offer of a Europe-wide nuclear umbrella.

“The Americans have the bombs on planes in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Turkey,” Macron told TF1 television on Tuesday. “We are ready to open this discussion. I will define the framework in a very specific way in the weeks and months to come.”

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NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte issued a stark appeal to young Russians not to fight in the war in Ukraine, saying they will be sent to the front with poor training, bad equipment and a high chance of being killed, wounded or abandoned. He backed his warning with NATO estimates that Russia is losing more than 30,000 soldiers a month – more in a single month than the Soviet Union lost during its entire 10-year war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Macron also listed three conditions for such a move, namely that “France will not pay for the security of others” and it “will not come at the expense of what we need.”

“The final decision will always rest with the president of the republic, as the head of the armed forces,” he added.

The United States is believed to have around 50 nuclear bombs stored at the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, a NATO member. France is believed to possess around 300 nuclear warheads.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, had threatened to nuke the West or Ukraine a grand total of 12 times throughout 2024.

“We never liked the French,” Medvedev said in one of his first social media updates in 2024.