Signal No. 145 · Finland's share of the nuclear burden

Finland's government announced on Monday it will join the initiative on the European dimension of France's nuclear deterrence that Emmanuel Macron launched in March. The release records eight countries announced then, followed by Norway, which joined in Paris on 27 May; Finland is the tenth. Antti Häkkänen, the defence minister, listed the forms the cooperation can take: dialogue on French nuclear doctrine, joint exercises in which the joining country observes or contributes conventional capabilities, "or, ultimately, the temporary deployment of elements of French strategic air forces in the allied country". Each partner sets its own pace. The joining countries "will not have obligations like NATO's collective defence", France asks for no contribution to the cost of its deterrent, "France will not provide an alternative nuclear umbrella", and "the nuclear weapons and any decisions that are essential to protect vital French interests will remain at the sole discretion of France".

Häkkänen's closing line: "Europe must assume a greater role both in conventional defence and in nuclear burden sharing." The joint statement followed confidential talks at political and official level; officials will first discuss how the cooperation begins, and Yle reports a steering group in the coming months.

Alexander Stubb, the president, said the initiative "is first and foremost about strengthening European security", that it does not replace NATO's nuclear deterrence, and that Finland will not station nuclear weapons on its territory in peacetime: "there would be no sense in that". Häkkänen's line on the division of labour: NATO's deterrence "is based on nuclear-sharing arrangements and relies on the United States' extended deterrent"; the French initiative "does not replace or overlap with" it. The Helsinki Times reports broad parliamentary backing with the Left Alliance opposed. The Forces aériennes stratégiques fly the ASMPA-R cruise missile on the Rafale B with A330 Phénix tankers; the temporary deployment on the Finnish list is the form that took two nuclear-capable Rafale into Nörvenich on 16 July, four months after Germany joined among the eight, when France and Germany agreed German conventional participation in a French nuclear exercise before the end of 2026, identified in press reporting as the Poker series.

Finland's restriction was statutory. The Nuclear Energy Act banned the import, manufacture, possession and detonation of nuclear explosive devices; parliament voted 125 to 61 on 17 June to repeal the ban and to permit such devices to be brought, transported, supplied or possessed in Finland where the country's military defence requires it, with acquisition, manufacture and detonation still offences. Norway's and Denmark's peacetime restrictions date from 1957 declarations of policy.

Asked aboard Air Force One on Sunday whether Ukraine would get more Patriot systems and a production licence, Donald Trump said talks are under way on a licence for "a less sophisticated version" of the interceptor: "When it comes to the elite, a lot of that was given to Ukraine, but we are making it very rapidly right now." He named no round; European Pravda reads it as the PAC-2. On 31 July, at Camp David, Trump said the United States "has not agreed" to grant Ukraine licences to produce Patriot missiles, three days after Zelenskyy said the matter had been settled politically at Ankara. On Sunday, at his Doonbeg course in Ireland, Trump also said Zelenskyy "has to stop knocking out the diesel fuel in Russia", with US diesel above USD 6 a gallon; Radosław Sikorski, on European Pravda's account of his X post on Monday, said that in the event of Russian aggression against NATO, Europe's air forces alone could destroy half of Russia's refineries faster than Ukraine has, without US involvement.

Zelenskyy said on Monday Mark Carney's CAD 350 million, announced in Calgary on Thursday through the Jumpstart channel without a type, buys PAC-3 rounds for Patriot, and that AIM-9 and AIM-120 missiles for NASAMS were also discussed, alongside "certain agreements" under which Canada buys from leaders "who cannot sell something to Ukraine directly for various reasons". The Financial Times reports Carney negotiating a Canadian contribution to the EUR 90 billion Ukraine Support Loan, to be sized before the EU–Canada summit in Montreal at the end of October; the UK is the only non-EU contributor so far, and Carney meets von der Leyen in Strasbourg on Wednesday.

On Sunday morning a Russian drone struck the locomotive of a Kyiv–Warsaw passenger train at Yahodyn station, two kilometres from the Dorohusk crossing. Ukrzaliznytsia, the state railway, said its monitoring group detected the drone about fifteen minutes out and evacuated passengers and crew, with no injuries; a diplomatic train carrying Boris Johnson, Carl Bildt and security advisers from several EU states had left Yahodyn ahead of schedule, and the railway called it "highly probable" that train was the target. A second train, with David Petraeus aboard, was still at the station. Earlier the same morning a drone hit a truck at a filling station less than a kilometre from Poland and the crossing closed for a time. Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said a dozen or more jet-powered Geran-5 drones attacked western Ukraine at dawn, two of them falling one and five kilometres from the border, with F-16s, helicopters and a Saab reconnaissance aircraft on station and no violation of Polish airspace. Dmitry Peskov, asked on Monday: "our troops are carrying out their tasks across the entire territory of Ukraine and continue to do so."

Donald Tusk, after a briefing at the Government Security Centre on Sunday: "the escalation of the Russian Federation's actions is becoming a fact", with examples ever closer to the border; "the coming weeks and months will be a time of very intensified actions", and Poland "cannot rule out that this escalation will also affect our territory". Services moved to an enhanced mode and border crossings to a special regime.

On Monday the military recovered a drone from the Baltic off Rusinowo beach near Jarosławiec, which Kosiniak-Kamysz called, on first inspection, a military drone of Russian origin. Cezary Tomczyk, the deputy defence minister, said the strikes near the border aim to cut Ukraine's military supplies before winter, a season Russia, in his reading, treats as a possible turning point in the war.

Martin Herem met the Eesti 200 faction on Monday morning as the Riigikogu opened its autumn session, and said he will take the oath before the chamber on Wednesday if Alar Karis signs the appointment. Toomas Uibo, the faction leader, described a candidate "quite clearly guided by data"; Herem's stated six-month agenda is warehouse and stock management, and reviews of Baltic Sea defence, air defence and the Baltic Defence Line. To ERR on Sunday he said he will not interfere with the defence forces commander's work, and that his contracts with Frankenburg Technologies, the interceptor start-up, are terminated.

The same afternoon the budget-control special committee sat without Hanno Pevkur or Magnus-Valdemar Saar, the former head of the defence investment centre RKIK, who sent eight pages citing the European Public Prosecutor's investigation. Saar writes that the minister "brought and actively offered transactions", intervened in at least one major case on contract terms, delivery schedules, advance payments and pricing, sometimes negotiated directly with suppliers, and rejected RKIK's early-2025 proposal to stop the ammunition intermediation and return uncontracted funds; two Datasel transactions ran through a Greek company, Nordeto, unknown to RKIK and, to Saar's knowledge, not in the ammunition trade, on the minister's initiative. Pevkur answered ERR in writing: keeping himself informed on Ukraine aid as minister was "entirely logical", the selection of aid was RKIK's competence, and the Nordeto offer reached his and the permanent secretary's inboxes on the evening of 28 October 2024 and was forwarded to RKIK's director the next morning. Kaimo Kuusk, the permanent secretary, told the committee it "would have to be verified whether such a written proposal had in fact been submitted", and that the contracts were by then signed.

EU ambassadors met in an extraordinary Coreper on Monday morning on the six-monthly renewal of the individual listings under the territorial-integrity regime and failed to agree, European Pravda reports. In a second session the same day they agreed a technical rollover: the Irish presidency said Coreper had extended the regime "until midnight on September 22", seven days, so that member states can examine the proposals for updating the lists and conclude their consultations. The listings, close to 3,000 persons and entities on Monday's reporting, would otherwise have lapsed on 15 September. Slovakia asks for Mikhail Fridman and Alisher Usmanov to be delisted; France joined the Usmanov request on 11 September, citing national security, and presented it as a compromise that could bring Bratislava round, on Euromaidan Press's account, where a diplomat called the French motive "mostly economic". On Saturday Zelenskyy named both men and wrote that "five hundred Shahed drones per day is certainly not the right time to even begin a discussion about easing sanctions".