The presidents of France Emmanuel Macron and China’s Xi Jinping Beijing on Thursday called for peace talks as soon as possible to end the war in Ukraine, ruling out the use of nuclear weapons, but a statement reportedly made by the French president sparked a backlash from the Kremlin.

“It should be a reminder to everyone, especially to Russia which announced the other day that it wants to develop such weapons in Belarus, which does not agree with the commitments made towards you and towards international law,” Emmanuel Macron emphasized.

“French President Emmanuel Macron said on April 6, 2023: “No country can deploy nuclear weapons on foreign soil ‘under any circumstances’. Do I understand correctly that the harsh demand of Paris is directed at Washington?’ asked the representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry emphatically Maria Zakharova. The Russian Foreign Ministry has posted maps of the European countries where nuclear bombs are stored in Europe, namely Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Turkey.

Nuclear

In 2019, an organization working with NATO published and then retracted a document that said US nuclear weapons were stored in air bases in many European countries. In particular, these are: Kleine Brogel in Belgium, Büchel in Germany, Torre and Ghedi in Italy, Volkel in the Netherlands and Incirlik in Turkey, as the Statista graph shows, the data of which is cited by Moscow.

A copy of the document was published in the Belgian newspaper De Morgen according to which B61 nuclear bombs are stored at six bases in Europe.