„Congratulations, Finland, you've reached the pinnacle of security” - a sentence that, coming from Moscow, sounds like a threat rather than a compliment.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia's Security Council and former Russian president, announced on X that Finland is from now on on the list of Russian nuclear targets. The trigger is concrete: on July 1, Finnish President Alexander Stubb signed amendments to the Nuclear Energy Act allowing the import, transit and transport of nuclear weapons across Finnish territory. Medvedev didn't hold back the sarcasm: „Finland has lifted its ban on receiving nuclear weapons on its territory. What does that change for the Finns? Just one small thing: their country is now on the list of Russian nuclear targets.”

Finland, of course, didn't do this on a whim. The amendment aligns Finnish legislation with its NATO membership - a country that spent centuries building neutrality and, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, joined the Alliance in under two years and completely changed its security doctrine. Finnish Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen clarified that the new rules let Finland fully use NATO's nuclear umbrella. Stubb, for his part, added that Finland does not plan to station allied nuclear weapons on its soil - it just wants full membership without restrictions.

So the law opens a possibility but doesn't bring a single bomb onto Finnish soil - at least for now. That didn't stop Medvedev from turning the matter into a threat, which has been his specialty in recent years: the louder the rhetoric, the smaller the actual move behind it. The question is how many such „target lists” already exist and how many of them are real strategy versus a show for the domestic audience.

For a reader in the Balkans, this exchange is a reminder of how quickly the rules of European security shift. A country that for generations lived as a buffer between East and West took, in two years, one side of the line - and immediately got a threat in return. The Balkans know both buffer zones and target lists from their own past. The question that remains is whether Europe is entering a period where nuclear rhetoric again becomes everyday, and we're forced to get used to it like a weather forecast.