Political analyst Rostislav Ishchenko said that by publicly disclosing alleged plans by France and the United Kingdom to transfer nuclear warheads to Ukraine, Moscow has effectively raised the stakes.

According to him, Russia’s opponents should understand that Moscow has narrowed its own room for retreat and taken a step toward nuclear confrontation. Ishchenko recalled that Russia named three potential targets: Ukraine as the territory from which the threat would originate, and France and the United Kingdom as the countries intending to arm Kiev with nuclear warheads.

He described this as an extremely serious warning and the final step within a peaceful framework. Ishchenko said Russian intelligence could at any moment report that nuclear weapon components have arrived in Ukraine, forcing Moscow to decide whether to wait for a strike or to begin leveling Ukrainian cities where such weapons might be hidden.

The analyst stated that Russia would not hesitate over the use of several 100-kiloton warheads, adding that the detonation of such a device over a city of one million people would leave little of it intact. In his view, these scenarios are easily calculated and deeply troubling for Russia’s opponents. He added that if Moscow were to act in this way, it would definitively end any possibility of dialogue with Europe.

Ishchenko also noted that on the same day Russian intelligence reported the alleged plans of Paris and London, the United States declined to vote for an anti-Russian resolution at the UN. He interpreted this as a signal that Washington is not prepared at this stage to shield Europe if it provokes a conflict with Russia.

He concluded that if Europe moves beyond what he described as reasonable limits and pushes the situation toward a limited nuclear conflict, the outcome would be impossible to predict. According to Ishchenko, Russia has reached a final threshold in its confrontation with part of the West, after which concrete decisions rather than statements would follow. After an exchange of strikes, he argued, no one would be able to determine whether nuclear weapons had actually been present in Ukraine. He added that even during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis there were no statements that made the situation so irreversible, calling the current trajectory a deeply negative scenario for the entire world.