Vladimir Putin possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. His neighbors no longer seem to care. Lithuania spent last week preparing to remove a post-Soviet restriction from its constitution that prevents NATO from stationing nuclear weapons there—then openly dismissed the threat that followed from the Kremlin.
This morning, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb went one better, announcing his country was joining a French initiative that could see Helsinki exercise with France’s nuclear forces and temporarily host French strategic aircraft on Finnish soil. This is not good for the Russian president. For so long, his most valuable nuclear weapon has been the one sitting quietly in its silo.
It doesn’t need to be used—just the knowledge it could be has allowed the Kremlin to cajole, coerce and outright bully Western-aligned governments into inaction. Lithuania and Finland suggest Putin’s words may be losing their punch. What will he do when words stop working?
Besides Ukraine, no country embodies the shift in Europe’s attitude to Russia’s nuclear threat better than Lithuania. Article 137 of its constitution, written as the country emerged from Soviet occupation, bans Lithuania from hosting weapons of mass destruction or foreign military bases on its soil. Last week, the Seimas Legal Affairs Committee voted 7—2 to back an amendment scrapping it, pending full parliamentary approval.
The amendment's explanatory note could hardly be clearer. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, escalating nuclear rhetoric and military buildup mean Lithuania can no longer be prevented from enjoying "the full potential of NATO deterrence." The Kremlin responded on cue. Speaking on Friday, press secretary Dmitry Peskov warned that deploying nuclear weapons there would represent a "very serious" escalation and said Lithuania would come "under the sights of Russia’s nuclear weapons" if Western weapons were ever stationed there.
Vilnius’ response basically was, "So what?" Speaking to Lithuania’s public service broadcaster LRT, Lithuanian Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas deadpanned, "Moscow probably simply forgot to mention that Lithuania, like all other NATO states, is already Russia's target." He went on to dismiss Peskov’s threat as an "intimidation that has nothing to do with reality." Such a response would’ve been almost impossible to imagine in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Four years ago, Moscow's nuclear arsenal had enormous value because nobody needed to know where Putin's real threshold lay; Western governments simply needed to worry that they might stumble over the line accidentally. Joe Biden ruled out sending U.S. forces into Ukraine almost immediately for precisely this reason.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
