Russo-French war of 2024? I guess NATO/Article 5 isn't modeled in this game?

I just started playing this game a few days ago after picking it up on sale. Absolutely love it, and 100% have zero clue what I'm doing. I'm like a dog trying to fly an F-35. Immediately set difficulty to cinematic and fired up the resistance tutorial campaign.

So I read on here that doing a Kazakhstan->Canada/Mexico control point run was a good idea so I opened with that. I also grabbed executive control in France before migrating to the USA, and here's the important part - before I left I disarmed France into a non-nuclear power. No idea if this was a good strategy or not, like I said, dog in the F-35.

So now I have full control over USA/Canada and the Glorious Republic of Kazakhstan and all of a sudden, wars start popping off. Russia, which has been banging its head against Ukraine (true to life) for 2 years decides to open a war against the French and... Irish?? For some reason. Last thing that happened before I put the game down last night was that India has also decided to get in on both wars on the Russian side as well.

So, obviously French de-nuking was probably a catalyst for this, but this whole chain of events feels insane and objectively wrong from a "grand strategy" title. Being able to whisper in a governments ear and convince then to give up their entire nuke arsenal is already a preeeety big stretch. But then to have Russia (while bogged down in Ukraine) open up 2 additional fronts against a nato member not on its borders and Ireland (what are you after? Good milk?) is downright insane. What's going on here?