Kremlin says Lithuania will sit in Russia's nuclear sights if it hosts NATO warheads

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that Lithuania would "come into the sights" of Russia's nuclear arsenal if it hosted Western nuclear weapons, after Vilnius moved a step closer to deleting the constitutional ban that has kept such arms off its soil since independence.

"If there are nuclear weapons on the territory that are aimed at us, then that country's territory would likewise come within the sights of our nuclear weapons," Peskov told Russian state television, according to RIA Novosti. He called the plan "a very serious turn in terms of escalating tensions."

Lithuanian officials have repeated that they have no present plan to station warheads. The legal change is about removing a prohibition, not signing a basing agreement. Peskov treated the distinction as irrelevant.

What Vilnius is actually changing

Article 137 of the Lithuanian Constitution bars foreign military bases and weapons of mass destruction from the country. Seimas Chairman Juozas Olekas has said the clause makes Lithuania "a black sheep" inside NATO when the alliance writes collective defence and deterrence plans. The Legal Affairs Committee voted 7-2 on Wednesday to advance a repeal. Parties reached a provisional deal in July. President Gitanas Nauseda announced the direction that month, saying Lithuania wanted to be "an integral part of this nuclear deterrence."

A constitutional amendment needs two votes, at least three months apart, and a two-thirds majority each time. If the calendar holds, the ban could come off this winter or early in 2027. Nauseda and the main parties support the change. Officials have still said there is no request on the table to host US or other allied nuclear weapons.

Lithuania joined NATO in 2004. It is the only allied state with a constitutional bar of this kind. Russia has already moved nuclear weapons into Belarus, which sits on Lithuania's eastern flank, a process Moscow began in 2023.

Medvedev goes further

Later on Friday, Dmitry Medvedev, the former president who now sits as deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, said Lithuania would "disappear from the map of the world" if a conflict tied to the ban's removal broke out. He argued that NATO would not invoke Article 5 because doing so would mean "a global catastrophe." He also denied that Russia intends to attack Europe, a line that sits beside the threat rather than cancelling it.

The pairing matters. Peskov spoke in the register of nuclear targeting. Medvedev spoke in the register of state extinction and of splitting the alliance. Both men were answering the same committee vote.

The military geography

Lithuania is a thin state between the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus. The Suwalki corridor, the land link between Poland and the Baltic republics, runs along its south-west. NATO has treated that strip as the most likely place for a fast Russian move against the alliance. Putting nuclear-capable aircraft or storage on Lithuanian territory would shorten flight times into Kaliningrad and into the Russian heartland. It would also put those assets inside a country that Russia already treats as hostile and historically temporary.

Vilnius's argument is the opposite of Peskov's. The ban, Olekas says, prevents Lithuania from taking a full part in NATO nuclear planning. Deterrence, in that view, is weaker if one allied capital cannot even discuss hosting. The committee members who voted yes said the change would help "contain Russia."

What is not happening yet

No allied government has announced a decision to move weapons. No storage site has been named. No dual-capable aircraft wing has been assigned. The fight this week is over a sentence in a constitution. Peskov and Medvedev chose to answer that sentence with nuclear language anyway.

The next date is the first full Seimas vote. If it passes, the clock on the second vote starts. Between those two sittings, NATO capitals will have to say whether they want the option Vilnius is creating, and whether they will say so in public while Russian nuclear forces in Belarus are already on the other side of the same border.