STOCKHOLM, February 18. /TASS/. France’s Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier will arrive in the southern Swedish city of Malmo on February 25, the Swedish Armed Forces reported.

According to the SVT TV channel, this will be the first time in more than 50 years that a nuclear-powered ship has visited the Scandinavian country.

The Charles de Gaulle carrier will stay in Malmo for several days. The visit is part of regular NATO drills. In the spring, the French aircraft carrier will take part in joint NATO exercises in the Baltic, North, Norwegian, and Mediterranean Seas, the military said in a statement.

The aircraft carrier's visit has been carefully prepared by the Swedish authorities, including the Radiation Safety Authority. "An emergency response zone will be set up, similar to the one used around nuclear power plants, but much smaller," the agency’s spokesman Pelle Zettersten told SVT.

The Charles de Gaulle is 261.5 meters long and is the world's largest non-American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. The ship will visit Sweden as part of the French-led Orion26 drills. It usually carries several thousand sailors and servicemen, as well as about 30 fighter jets, and is accompanied by several military ships. The visit to Sweden is seen as a sign of increasingly close military cooperation between Sweden and France, SVT pointed out.