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06-03-2026
MOSCOW: Russia said on Wednesday that France’s plan to expand its nuclear arsenal was a highly destabilizing move that posed a potential threat to Moscow.
French President Emmanuel Macron announced the plan on Monday, saying other European countries would also be able to take part in French nuclear exercises. France and Germany said they had set up a nuclear steering group to discuss deterrence issues.
Macron first said in March 2025 that he would launch a strategic dialogue on extending the protection of France’s nuclear umbrella to European allies that have until now relied on the United States.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters that Macron’s announcement this week was “an extremely destabilizing development”.
It represented “a significant strengthening and expansion of NATO’s nuclear potential, which, in the event of a direct military conflict with Russia, could be used in a coordinated manner against our country,” she said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, speaking separately to reporters, said the French move vindicated Moscow’s position that French and British nuclear weapons should be part of any future negotiation on the global nuclear balance.
Russia says it is open to such talks following the expiry last month of New START, the last bilateral treaty that limited the numbers of Russian and US strategic nuclear warheads and missiles
US President Donald Trump on Thursday rejected an offer from his Russian counterpart to voluntarily extend the caps on strategic nuclear weapons deployments after the treaty that held them in check expired.
“Rather than extend “New START … we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Arms control advocates warn that the expiration of the treaty will fuel an accelerated nuclear arms race, while US opponents say the pact constrained the US ability to deploy enough weapons to deter nuclear threats posed by both Russia and China.
Trump’s post was in response to a proposal by Russian President Vladimir Putin for the sides to adhere for a year to the 2010 accord’s limit of 1,550 warheads on 700 delivery systems missiles, aircraft and submarines.
New START was the last in a series of arms control treaties between the world’s two largest nuclear weapons powers dating back more than half a century to the Cold War. It allowed for only a single extension, which Putin and former US President Joe Biden agreed to for five years in 2021.
In his post, Trump called New START “a badly negotiated deal” that he said “is being grossly violated,” an apparent reference to Putin’s 2023 decision to halt on-site inspections and other measures designed to reassure each side that the other was complying with the treaty.
Putin cited US support for Ukraine’s battle against Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion as the reason for his decision. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the US would continue talks with Russia.
Both sides signal openness to talks
Earlier, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was still ready to engage in dialogue with the US if Washington responded constructively to Putin’s proposal.
“Listen, if there are any constructive replies, of course we will conduct a dialogue,” Peskov told reporters. The UN has urged both sides to restore the treaty.
Besides setting numerical limits on weapons, New START included inspection regimes experts say served to build a level of trust and confidence between the nuclear adversaries, helping make the world safer. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
