April 2026

In line with other moves to enhance European nuclear and conventional military planning, Finland announced its intention to lift its full ban on hosting nuclear weapons.

A March 5 press release from the Finnish Defense Ministry said the government intended to amend the state’s Nuclear Energy Act to allow nuclear arms within its territory. The act, passed in 1987, currently prohibits the “Import of nuclear explosives as well as their manufacture, possession and detonation.”

The proposed change would allow the import of nuclear devices into Finland or their transport, supply or possession. The amendment is open for comment by the Finnish Parliament until April 2.

“The objective is to remove legal barriers to enable Finland’s homeland defence as part of the Alliance and the full utilisation of NATO’s deterrence and defence,” the ministry emphasized in the press release.

On March 2, France announced a change in its nuclear strategy, calling for an increase in its nuclear arsenal and the potential for temporary deployment of nuclear air forces to other NATO allies. (See ACT, March 2026.)

In a March 4 interview with EBRA group, French Minister of the Armed Forces Catherine Vautrin said: “We have retained the fissile materials (uranium and plutonium) from nuclear warheads dismantled after the Cold War. As such, we have a stockpile entirely sufficient to produce the new nuclear warheads.”

The United States and France convened a dialogue on “deterrence, strategic stability, and nonproliferation” in Paris March 9. They decided to establish an annual bilateral dialogue and to create a working group to facilitate strengthened cooperation and prepare annual talks.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov condemned Finland’s change in policy and told reporters, March 6: “This is a statement that leads to an escalation of tensions on the European continent.”—LIBBY FLATOFF 

April 2026

A Russian intelligence service accused France and the United Kingdom Feb. 24 of considering the transfer of nuclear weapons to Ukraine, echoing earlier unfounded claims in October 2022 that Kyiv was seeking to attain a dirty bomb.

The new allegations were quickly rejected by French, UK, and Ukrainian officials.

“Ukraine has already denied such absurd Russian claims many times before, and we officially deny them again now,” said Heorhii Tykhyi, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, according to a Feb. 24 Reuters report.

Dismissing the “baseless statement,” the French Defense Ministry’s communications director, Olivia Penichou, said that France always honored its commitments under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which bars the transfer of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear-weapon states, Reuters reported Feb. 26.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova expanded Feb. 24 on the intelligence service accusation, claiming that “the plans involve, at minimum, a dirty bomb, though serious consideration is also being given to full-fledged nuclear weapons, including delivery systems.”

U.S. officials were concerned that the last round of Russian accusations in October 2022 were a potential pretext for nuclear escalation, The New York Times later reported. Unlike in 2022, however, the new accusations do not appear to be prompted by major setbacks to the Russian conventional war effort in Ukraine.

The new accusations have also not been taken up by senior Russian officials at the highest levels. In October 2022, the dirty bomb accusations were widely promulgated by cabinet-level ministers, ambassadors, and spokespersons for President Vladimir Putin.

Beyond Zakharova, the latest allegations have been repeated by Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of the Russian Security Council and former president. The intelligence report was also discussed by Russian parliamentarians.—XIAODON LIANG

April 2026

The U.S. Department of Defense designated AI company Anthropic a supply chain risk March 4, in a move the firm described as punishment in an ongoing contract dispute.

The designation will prevent the department and its contractors from using Anthropic products, including its AI model, Claude, and associated tools in their operations.

The company’s chief executive officer, Dario Amodei, said in a Feb. 26 statement that two outstanding issues had arisen in contract renegotiations with the Pentagon: the company’s insistence that its products not be used for domestic mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons systems.

The Pentagon insisted that its contract with Anthropic permits “any lawful use.”

Anthropic’s “true objective is unmistakable: to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military,” said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a Feb. 27 social media post.

President Donald Trump said on the same day in a social media post that he had ordered the entire federal government to cease using Anthropic products within six months.

A judge in the Northern District of California granted Anthropic a preliminary injunction March 26 in a lawsuit that the firm had filed against the Defense Department. The lawsuit described the Pentagon’s designation as “unprecedented and unlawful.”

Competitor firm OpenAI announced late Feb. 27 that it had reached agreement with the Pentagon on terms of use for its products with the department.

Anthropic’s Claude overtook OpenAI’s ChatGPT in mobile app downloads for the first time following the Pentagon decision, according to mobile analytics firm Appfigures.—XIAODON LIANG