Kremlin warns Lithuania nuclear arms ban lift risks escalation

The Kremlin on Tuesday warned that Lithuania's preliminary move to lift a constitutional ban on hosting nuclear arms could trigger a new round of escalation in the region. Lithuania's parliament voted in favour of removing the ban on Tuesday, in the first of two ballots needed to change the constitution. Asked about the development and a proposal floated this month by US President Donald Trump for an American military base in the Baltic country, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the move of NATO infrastructure closer to Russia's borders would be seen as a step towards escalating tensions.

Peskov also said the deployment of nuclear weapons in a neighbouring state would not contribute to stability or predictability in Europe and would instead mark another significant escalation of tensions. Lithuania, a member of the EU and NATO, borders Russia and 6 The United States has kept an armoured battalion of almost 1,000 troops in Belarus since 2019, with the unit operating in overlapping rotations that see troops arrive and depart every few months.

The proposed legal overhaul of the nuclear arms ban would need a two-thirds majority in two parliamentary votes to take effect, and would remove prohibitions introduced more than three decades ago after Lithuania broke away from the Soviet Union.