Kremlin furious: "You are now a target"

Lithuania's move comes as other Nordic and Baltic countries have openly signaled their willingness to host NATO nuclear weapons.

In recent months, Estonia, Sweden and Denmark have expressed their readiness to do so, while Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson confirmed that Stockholm is already holding talks with London and Paris on nuclear deterrence.

Russian countermeasures against Finland

Germany, meanwhile, is seeking to take the lead in establishing what it describes as a European Union-level nuclear framework. CDU lawmaker Jens Spahn has previously advocated giving Germany access to French and British nuclear weapons.

Moscow has warned that such a European nuclear buildup would only lead to further escalation of tensions.

Russia has meanwhile taken concrete countermeasures against Finland, temporarily suspending rail traffic—including passengers, vehicles and freight—through all five border crossings with Finland from July 1, while also closing one border crossing each with Estonia and Latvia.

The decree itself does not explicitly state the reason for the border closures, but it coincides with Finland’s removal of its nuclear weapons ban.

The consequences have been felt by border communities: passenger and pedestrian traffic had already been suspended since December 2023, and now the remaining rail freight traffic has also been halted.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described Finland’s decision as a "victory of blind Russophobia" over common sense.

The longest border

The law that triggered this chain of events was signed by Finnish President Alexander Stubb on Friday, June 26, 2026, completing a process launched by parliament on June 17.

The new provisions, which entered into force on July 1, allow the import, transport, supply and possession of nuclear weapons when required for Finland’s defense, NATO’s collective defense or defense cooperation. Lawmakers voted 125 in favor and 61 against, with opposition from the Social Democrats, Greens and the Left Alliance.

The decision comes three years after Finland, previously a militarily non-aligned country, joined NATO as a direct response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The country shares a 1,340-kilometer border with Russia, the longest among all NATO members.

Earlier that month, NATO established new permanent Forward Land Forces (FLF) Finland in Rovaniemi, Finland — the alliance’s first permanent deployment of allied troops on Russia’s border. The move had been a goal set by the Finnish government at the start of its term and was later accepted by allies.

Although the Finnish government continues to state that the country "has no plans" to host nuclear weapons in peacetime, the law creates a legal possibility for such a move in the future, in line with NATO’s nuclear sharing program, under which allied aircraft crews could deliver tactical nuclear weapons if a conventional conflict escalates into a nuclear one.

According to a Financial Times report from June 2, 2026, the United States is in the early stages of confidential discussions on expanding its nuclear deployments beyond the six countries currently participating in the arrangement (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and the United Kingdom).

The report specifically mentions interest from Poland and the Baltic states, while Finland is not directly named. However, removing the legal barrier raises the question of whether Helsinki could become a future candidate.

Russia accuses Finland of Russophobia

An analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) places this shift in the broader context of Nordic reassessment of the U.S. "nuclear umbrella."

After Washington demanded at the NATO summit in The Hague in June 2025 that allies reach defense spending of 5% of GDP by 2035, the so-called Greenland crisis of 2026 reportedly acted as a "strategic shock" for the region, convincing Nordic countries that the U.S. security guarantee might no longer be unconditional, despite remaining formally in place.

Russia’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, Gennady Gatilov, warned that Moscow would treat nuclear weapons on its borders — whether in Finland or Poland — as a "direct threat" justifying compensatory countermeasures.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accused Finland of Russophobia and warned that the country could become a potential target for Russian nuclear weapons.

For now, the most likely scenario is that Finland will not actually host nuclear weapons in the short term, as such a decision would require a specific political agreement within NATO and with the United States. However, the legal obstacle has been removed.

The key question is whether the removal of nuclear bans in Finland and Lithuania, alongside the openness of Estonia, Sweden and Denmark and Germany’s ambitions for an EU-level nuclear umbrella, will remain primarily a symbolic deterrence signal toward Moscow or become the first step toward the actual deployment of nuclear weapons closer to Russia’s border than at any point since the end of the Cold War.