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The US and its allies need a reminder of the nuclear risk posed by the Ukraine conflict, Dmitry Medvedev believes

The US, the UK, France and other Western nations should take a Russian nuclear drill as a reminder of where escalation of the Ukraine conflict could take them, former President Dmitry Medvedev has said.

On Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced an imminent exercise to test the capability to deploy non-strategic nuclear weapons. It said the training was ordered by President Vladimir Putin after "provocative statements and threats" by Western officials.

Medvedev, who serves as deputy head of the Russian Security Council, referred to debates in the West about possible deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine, as well as "active encouragement [of Kiev] to use [Western] missile weapons against the entire Russian territory" as grounds for the drill.

Russia "will have to respond" to the proposed deployment of Western soldiers, "and this response will not be" in Ukraine, the Russian official warned. In that case "there will be no hiding on Capitol Hill, in the Elysee Palace or at 10 Downing Street."

The situation is comparable to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, according to Medvedev. He said current Western elites were "infantile morons" who refuse to see the risk, unlike US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who managed to walk back the escalation six decades ago.

French President Emmanuel Macron has been advocating "strategic ambiguity" regarding Ukraine, maintaining that he could not exclude deployment of troops to the country under certain conditions. Multiple Western leaders said they had no intention to send their soldiers to fight Russia on Ukraine's behalf, after he voiced his idea in February.

Macron's rhetoric may be explained by his ambition to make France the leader among EU members, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has suggested.

UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron told Reuters last week that Kiev "has the right" to use British-provided missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia.

For years, major Western arms donors were reportedly conditioning their aid on Kiev's pledge not to use the weapons outside of the territory that it claims. US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink said American policy remained unchanged following Cameron's remark.

On Sunday, Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries claimed that "there's a significant likelihood that America will have to get into the conflict - not simply with our money, but with our servicewomen and our servicemen" in the event of Ukrainian defeat.

A victorious Russia would pose a threat to NATO, he reasoned during an interview with CBS News, repeating the case for continued aid made by the Biden administration for months. Moscow has said it has no intention of starting a direct conflict with the US-led military bloc.

The military cited "provocative statements and threats against Russia by certain Western officials" as the reason for the drill.

The French president has previously called to show that the EU is not a "vassal" of the US

France must open a debate on building up a pan-European defense capability, to include rethinking its own nuclear potential, French President Emmanuel Macron has said.

Speaking to a group of young people at the European School in Strasbourg on Friday, Macron stressed that while France is already protected by NATO, it "must now go further" to ensure its security and "build a credible European defense."

He noted that guaranteeing that security "may mean deploying anti-missile shields" to be able to deter the use of nuclear weapons. "Being credible also means having long-range missiles that would deter the Russians," he added.

Numerous Western leaders have insisted on boosting defense capabilities amid the Ukraine conflict, citing fears that Russia could attack NATO within a few years.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has dismissed such speculation as "nonsense," pointing to the fact that the US, NATO's largest contributor, spends ten times more on defense than Moscow. He has also stated that current geopolitical tensions are largely due to NATO's decision to ignore Russian security interests.

Explaining his stance on nuclear weapons, Macron went on to say that while France would use its arsenal only if its vital interests were threatened, those interests also have a wider dimension. This means that French nuclear doctrine should contribute to the credibility of the EU's defense, he said.

"I am in favor of opening this debate, which must therefore include anti-missile defense, long-range weapon firing, nuclear weapons for those who have them or who have American nuclear weapons on their soil," the president stated.

For several years, Macron has also advocated creating a "true, European army" to be able to independently strengthen continental security. This month, he also warned that "our Europe today is mortal and it can die" while calling for a "strategic autonomy" for the EU, particularly in terms of military production. The bloc "must show that it is never a vassal of the United States," he said.

The idea of creating a joint EU army, however, has met strong pushback both in Brussels and in EU capitals. EU top diplomat Josep Borrell suggested last month that while the bloc should aspire to boost the military capabilities of its individual members, that does not mean it should create a common army.

Several EU states, including Denmark and Poland, have similarly signaled that they want their security guaranteed within the existing NATO framework.

In an interview with the French daily La Tribune on Saturday, Macron, who has famously refused to rule out sending Western troops to Ukraine, once again advocated a policy of "strategic ambiguity" towards Russia, arguing that the key idea behind such an approach is to project strength while "not giving too many details."

Describing Russia as "an adversary," the French president stressed that establishing "a priori limits" would be interpreted as weakness. "We must remove all visibility from it, because that is what creates the ability to deter," he argued.

The Steadfast Defender drills, featuring some 90,000 troops from all 32 NATO member states and 1,100 combat vehicles, started in late January and will end in May.

June 6 (Reuters) - Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that U.S.-built F-16 fighter jets can "accommodate" nuclear weapons and warned that supplying Kyiv with them will escalate the conflict further."

We must keep in mind that one of the modifications of the F-16 can 'accommodate' nuclear weapons," Lavrov said in a speech at a military base in Dushanbe in Tajikistan, according to a transcript on the ministry's website."If they do not understand this, then they are worthless as military strategists and planners."

White House spokesman John Kirby on Tuesday declined to discuss the nuclear capabilities of the F-16 fighters but noted that U.S. President Joe Biden has been consistent that he does not want to see the war escalate, certainly not into the nuclear realm.

Russia would consider foreign deployments of nuclear weapons in Poland a primary military target, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has warned.

Warsaw is in talks with Washington on potentially hosting nuclear arms as part of a NATO program. President Andrzej Duda reiterated Poland's willingness to host the weapons in an interview this week.

A tactical nuclear weapon (TNW) or non-strategic nuclear weapon (NSNW)^[1] is a nuclear weapon that is designed to be used on a battlefield in military situations, mostly with friendly forces in proximity and perhaps even on contested friendly territory.

[...]
The yield varies for a tactical nuclear weapon from a fraction of a kiloton to approximately 50 kilotons.^[7] In comparison, a strategic nuclear weapon has a yield from 100 kilotons to over a megaton, with much larger warheads available.^[7]

Richter Tons of TNT Explosion

1 0.0005
2 0.0151
3 0.4769
4 15.0802
5 476.8791 This is half a kiloton of TNT
6 15.0802 * 10³ This is 15 kilotons of TNT
6.5 84.8024 * 10³ This is 85 kilotons of TNT

The United States has about 200 tactical nuclear gravity bombs with explosive yields adjustable between 0.3 and 170 kilotons. (The yield of the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons.) The Pentagon deploys about 100 of those bombs, called the B61, in five European countries: Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Technically speaking, every low-yield nuclear weapon is a radiation weapon, including non-enhanced variants. All nuclear weapons up to about 10 kilotons in yield have prompt neutron radiation^[2] as their furthest-reaching lethal component. For standard weapons above about 10 kilotons of yield, the lethal blast and thermal effects radius begins to exceed the lethal ionizing radiation radius.^[11][12][13] Enhanced radiation weapons also fall into this same yield range and simply enhance the intensity and range of the neutron dose for a given yield.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday arrived in France on a state visit hosted by Emmanuel Macron where the French leader will seek to push his counterpart on issues ranging from Ukraine to trade.

Xi's arrival for the visit marking 60 years of diplomatic relations between France and China was the start of his first trip to Europe since 2019 which will also see him visit Serbia and Hungary.

But Xi's choice of France as the sole major European power to visit indicates the relative warmth in Sino-French relations since Macron made his own state visit to China in April 2023 and acknowledges the French leader's stature as an EU powerbroker.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has condemned the latest remarks from French President Emmanuel Macron about the option of sending troops to Ukraine, and has warned such a move could ultimately spark an all-out nuclear war. The diplomat strongly condemned the idea, saying that the French leader's comments themselves have contributed to escalating the situation.

Macron doubled down on previous statements about the prospect of deploying French troops to Ukraine. The president said his original remarks, made earlier this year, were a "strategic wake-up call for my counterparts." He suggested that Paris could deploy troops "if the Russians were to break through the front lines" and a request for help came from Kiev.

Hungary's top diplomat also criticized Macron's idea that France's nuclear weapons could become a part of a credible European defense.

"In peacetime it would be different, but in wartime such statements can be misinterpreted and have serious consequences. It will be over for everyone."

Speaking to Hungarian broadcaster M1 earlier in the day, the minister also rejected NATO's proposed €100 billion ($107 billion) five-year plan for a war chest to prop up Ukraine, floated by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, describing it as "madness."

"In the coming weeks during negotiations we will fight for Hungary's right to stay away from this madness, from collecting these 100 billion and siphoning them out of Europe."

Hungary has been consistently opposed to the growing involvement of both the US-led NATO and the EU in the Ukrainian conflict, refusing to support Kiev militarily, including through sending weaponry or training Ukrainian troops.