Lithuania’s parliamentary parties have agreed on a plan to lift a constitutional ban on nuclear weapons and foreign military bases in the Baltic nation, the president said, in a sign of how Russia is resetting security calculations in the region.
The move – a major legal overhaul which will need two-thirds majorities in two parliamentary votes to go through – would remove prohibitions put in place more than three decades ago after Lithuania broke away from the Soviet Union.
“The geopolitical situation is getting worse,” President Gitanas Nauseda told reporters after meeting with parliament party leaders yesterday.
“Our constitution was written when geopolitical circumstances were totally different.”
Lithuania – a Nato member which shares land borders with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and with Moscow’s ally Belarus – has tripled its defence spending since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
It is upgrading its armed forces, fortifying its borders and building the infrastructure for the combat-ready German brigade which will be permanently based there in 2027, to deter Russia from attacking.
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