MOSCOW, December 22. /TASS/. Paris and London are upping their nuclear cooperation, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said.

"Notably, the United Kingdom and France are demonstratively proceeding to a new level of coordination in the nuclear sphere, which includes joint nuclear planning and, hence, their potential use of nuclear arms as part of a common plan," he said at a panel of the Valdai International Discussion Club.

"This, in our opinion, also includes active discussions within the European Union of the idea of forming a kind of a superstructure to the joint NATO nuclear missions in the format of an allegedly alternative, but, in fact, supplementary to the American nuclear umbrella, common European nuclear shield," he emphasized.