Lithuania's parliament votes 106 to 18 to strip the constitutional ban on nuclear weapons

Lithuania's parliament voted on 6 October 2026 to begin removing from its Constitution the clause that forbids nuclear weapons and foreign military bases on Lithuanian soil. Euronews reported the first-reading result as 106 in favour, 18 against and six abstentions, a tally the Kyiv Independent gave identically. The provision at issue, Article 137, is one sentence long and has stood since the Constitution was adopted by referendum in 1992. The vote does not amend anything yet. Under the Constitution's own rules a second vote must follow after at least three months, and Speaker of the Seimas Juozas Olekas indicated it would be held on 12 January 2027. What makes the day worth a piece is not the margin but what else happened on it: in Washington, President Donald Trump said the United States would consider a permanent military base in Lithuania, and the Kremlin said the Vilnius vote risked a new round of escalation.

One sentence, two prohibitions

The text published by the Seimas reads: "There may not be any weapons of mass destruction and foreign military bases on the territory of the Republic of Lithuania." The two bans sit in a single sentence, and the amendment declares the whole article void rather than editing it. That matters more than the nuclear framing suggests. The foreign-bases half of Article 137 is the part that bears on allied force posture in peacetime, and it is being repealed in the same motion, with no separate vote and no separate threshold.

The procedure is set out in Article 148. Chapters I and XIV of the Constitution can be altered only by referendum; Article 137 lies outside them, so the Seimas may amend it on its own authority, but only by two votes with a break of not less than three months between them, each carried by not less than two-thirds of all members. Two-thirds of 141 seats is 94. The 6 October tally of 106 clears that bar with twelve votes to spare, which is the single most useful number in the whole exercise: the majority is not a bare one, and the January vote would have to lose thirteen supporters to fail.

What the repeal does not buy

Removing a domestic prohibition does not produce a deployment. NATO describes its nuclear sharing arrangements as resting on allies contributing dual-capable aircraft "on a voluntary basis", while "the United States maintains absolute control and custody of its nuclear weapons forward-deployed in Europe". The decision to station anything therefore sits in Washington and, politically, in the Nuclear Planning Group, not in Vilnius. Remigijus Motuzas, who chairs the Seimas foreign affairs committee, put the case in exactly those terms, telling colleagues that NATO deterrence, including nuclear deterrence, is part of collective defence. The argument is about eligibility, not about hardware.

The same logic applies to bases. Trump's remark, reported by Bloomberg, was conditional - the United States would "look at" a permanent base - and Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius responded that Lithuania was prepared to cover the financial costs of a permanent American presence, leaving allies only the political decision. An offer to pay is not a commitment to build. But with Article 137 gone, a future Lithuanian government loses the ability to say that its constitution forbids the arrangement, which removes a standing excuse as well as a standing bar.

The regional pattern

Lithuania is following rather than leading. Finland's parliament voted 125 to 61 on 17 June 2026 to repeal the total ban on importing, producing, possessing and detonating nuclear explosives contained in its Nuclear Energy Act, a prohibition dating from the 1980s, while the Finnish government maintained it has no plans to host nuclear weapons. Latvia, Estonia and Poland carry no equivalent constitutional restriction, a comparison Lithuanian supporters of the amendment used repeatedly. Within three and a half years of Finland and Sweden joining the alliance, the northern and eastern flank has moved from legal abstention on nuclear basing to legal availability.

The fiscal backdrop is of the same character. The Lithuanian Ministry of National Defence reported that the Seimas approved a 2026 defence budget of EUR 4.79 billion, equal to 5.38 per cent of GDP and 43 per cent above 2025, with EUR 240 million for infrastructure including the Rudninkai training area that is to host Germany's brigade. NATO's Hague Summit Declaration of 25 June 2025 committed allies to 5 per cent of GDP by 2035, split into at least 3.5 per cent for core defence and up to 1.5 per cent for infrastructure, cyber and civil preparedness. Lithuania is already above the headline figure nine years early.

Moscow's answer and what to watch

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, as Euronews reported, that NATO military infrastructure moving closer to Russia's borders could not be read as anything other than a step towards escalating tensions, and that the same logic applied to nuclear weapons on the territory of a neighbouring state. Russia has stationed nuclear weapons in Belarus, which borders Lithuania to the east and south, and Kaliningrad borders it to the west; the asymmetry in the complaint is plain, but the response is a reminder that the January vote will be read in Moscow as a deployment decision whether or not it is one.

Three things decide what the amendment is worth. Whether the second vote on 12 January 2027 holds the 94 votes it needs. Whether Washington converts Trump's conditional remark into a basing agreement, which would require a status-of-forces arrangement and money that Sinkevicius has already offered to find. And whether any ally volunteers dual-capable aircraft or storage on Lithuanian territory, a step no government has publicly proposed. Until then, Lithuania will have changed its own law and nothing else - which is, on the evidence of Finland, how this sequence usually begins.

Sources

• Euronews — Lithuania takes further step towards lifting nuclear weapons ban
• Kyiv Independent — Lithuania takes 1st step to lift nuclear weapons ban amid Russian threat
• Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania — Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania (Articles 137 and 148)
• Bloomberg — Trump Says US to Consider Permanent Military Base in Lithuania
• Bloomberg — Finland Approves Law Allowing Nuclear Weapons on Its Territory for Defense
• NATO — NATO's nuclear deterrence policy and forces
• NATO — The Hague Summit Declaration, 25 June 2025
• Ministry of National Defence of Lithuania — The Seimas approves record defence budget of EUR 4.79 billion or 5.38 % of GDP in 2026