MOSCOW, October 2. /TASS/. The French command has arranged for the comprehensive training of strategic nuclear forces for the first time in a decade amid soaring tensions in relations between Russia and the North Atlantic Alliance and changes to Russia's nuclear doctrine. By doing so, the French are demonstrating their loyalty to NATO and trying hard to keep their few instruments of nuclear deterrence in good shape, says Alexander Stepanov, a military expert, program director of the Academy of Political Sciences.

"For the first time in many decades the French command initiated year-round comprehensive training of strategic nuclear forces under the intriguing codename of Poker-2024. Against the backdrop of soaring tensions between Russia and the North Atlantic Alliance and changes to Russia's nuclear doctrine, the French, in a gesture of Euro-Atlantic solidarity, are trying their best to maintain their few, rather moderate instruments of nuclear deterrence in proper shape. Let me remind you that their arsenal, according to Nuclear Notebook, is about 290 nuclear warheads for three sets of 16 submarine-launched missiles and 54 ASMP-A cruise missiles," said Stepanov, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Latin America of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

He specified that for training purposes the French have restored the nuclear forces coordination center in Taverny, mothballed since 2011, checked its technical condition and practiced measures to be taken by the personnel to make the arsenal combat-ready. Also, in May this year, test launches of the upgraded supersonic nuclear missiles ASMP-A with an inert warhead were conducted from a Rafale 22 fighter jet. In late September, as part of the third stage of the Poker-2024 exercise, Rafale B/M aircraft (nuclear warhead carriers) and Triumphan nuclear submarines practiced a scenario of engagement in an armed conflict.

"It is obvious that the main adversary, through its proxy - Paris - seeks to raise the degree of tension by proactively entering the next round of escalation, this time resorting to the forbidden technique of nuclear threats. Regaining strategic initiative in a confrontation is possible on the condition of projecting equivalent or asymmetric threats to the key beneficiaries of tensions - the US and Britain, more precisely, to those transnational structures that generate the conflict agenda in the Russian border area, and whose assets, including those of the US military-industrial complex, grow proportionately to the escalation. In order to fan tensions further on the US and Britain have made France look like a kind of front-runner for the potential introduction of foreign troops into Ukraine. The reason is that Paris has its own nuclear potential," the expert added, emphasizing that the instigators of the conflict in Ukraine hope that this fact, as well as Paris’ show of its combat-ready nuclear potential will work as a deterrent in relations with Moscow.

At the same time, he noted that "the French joker is out of the game," as the stakes are much higher and go beyond an exclusively European theater of military operations with guaranteed unacceptable potential damage to the United States in case the race up the nuclear escalation ladder goes on.