Lithuania's parliament has taken the first step towards deleting Article 137 of the Constitution - the provision that currently bans weapons of mass destruction and other countries' military bases on Lithuanian territory. The amendment was backed by 99 MPs, 13 voted against and five abstained. The response from Moscow arrived before the dust had even settled.

Alexei Zhuravlyov, first deputy chairman of the Defence Committee in Russia's State Duma, called for a strike with the "Oreshnik" missile or long-range drones on the sites where launchers would be placed, should nuclear weapons be deployed in Lithuania. "We need to respond extremely harshly - not with diplomatic notes and warnings," he told a Russian outlet. "It seems the West doesn't understand any other language at all."

It's worth reading the small print too: this is the position of a senior member of a Duma committee, not an announced decision by Russia's state leadership. But it isn't a lone voice either. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this month that any deployment of nuclear weapons, instead of increasing Lithuania's security, would make it a target for Russia's nuclear forces. Deputy chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev went further on 11 September - in the event of a military conflict with Russia, he said, Lithuania could "disappear from the map of the world".

Vilnius uses the opposite logic. Deputy Defence Minister Karolis Aleksa says lifting the ban doesn't increase the danger of a Russian attack, but sends a stronger deterrence signal. "It is a legitimate means of deterrence with which we protect our sovereignty," he said, stressing that the amendment on its own doesn't mean American or other nuclear bombs will arrive in the country straight away. In peacetime, he says, no such plan currently exists. MP Laurynas Kasčiūnas explains that the current provision goes so far that an allied aircraft or ship carrying nuclear weapons couldn't use Lithuanian territory in the way that is allowed in other countries in the region.

There's still a long way to go. The change must be confirmed twice more, with three months between the votes, and each time with at least 94 votes out of 141 MPs. The first final vote is planned for October, and final adoption for January 2027. In the background is a Financial Times report from June that the US is considering deploying nuclear capabilities in additional NATO members in Europe, including Poland and the Baltic states. Lithuanian authorities have confirmed they are taking part in those talks.

Geography explains the nerves. Lithuania sits between Russia's Kaliningrad and Belarus, where Russia has already deployed tactical nuclear weapons. On the same day parliament voted, President Gitanas Nausėda announced that a new rotation of American troops was on its way to the country - since 2019 the US has mostly kept an armoured battalion of around a thousand soldiers there.

The Balkans knows from its own history what it's like to be a small country on the line between blocs - for decades Yugoslavia built its whole policy on not belonging to anyone. Lithuania is choosing the opposite answer: going fully under the nuclear umbrella. Whether that makes it safer, or just a bigger target on the maps in Moscow, we'll only find out at a moment when nobody would want to.