In a major provocation, France and Poland are set to conduct joint military drills simulating nuclear strikes on Russian and Belarusian targets, according to Polish media.
French Rafale jets equipped with nuclear-capable ASMP missiles will rehearse long-range attacks from the Baltic Sea region — reaching as far as strategic sites near St. Petersburg — while Polish forces provide reconnaissance and conventional strikes with JASSM-ER cruise missiles.
The Kremlin has angrily rejected the plans, calling them proof that NATO is gearing up for open conflict.
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Under the scenarios, reportedly discussed during French President Emmanuel Macron’s meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk earlier this week, Polish F‑16 jets will conduct long‑range reconnaissance and target identification, and will strike “high‑value targets in the vicinity of St. Petersburg” using conventional JASSM‑ER cruise missiles.
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French Rafale B fighters, armed with ASMP missiles carrying nuclear warheads, will also fly from France to the Budapest‑Kaliningrad line and simulate nuclear strikes on targets in Russia and Belarus.
The planned exercises are described as part of Macron’s push to extend France’s “nuclear umbrella” over other European states and expand the country’s nuclear potential. Russia has consistently condemned NATO for escalating tensions on the European continent, particularly through its increasing nuclear rhetoric.
Responding to the reported French-Polish nuclear drills, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that they “show Europe’s aspiration for further militarization and nuclearization” and warned that such steps “do not contribute to stability and predictability on the European continent.”
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko also said on Thursday that NATO’s UK-led Joint Expedition Forces (JEF) has been practicing scenarios of a naval blockade and seizure of Russia’s Kaliningrad Region and is “deliberately pursuing a path of increasing confrontation.”
Meanwhile, the Finnish parliament took up a bill to allow the import and storage of nuclear weapons on the country’s territory. The move would overturn legal barriers that had banned such devices in the country since the 1980s.
Moscow has warned that any deployment of nuclear weapons in Finland would be a direct threat to Russia and would trigger retaliatory measures.
Speaking exclusively to RT on Thursday, Andrey Kartapolov, chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee, warned that Finnish lawmakers would be making a “big mistake” if they voted in favor of the bill. The arrival of foreign nuclear weapons in the Nordic country would significantly undermine its own security, according to the senior Russian MP.
The relevant military installations on Finnish soil would inevitably end up on Russian strategic forces’ priority target list, Kartapolov predicted.
