Lithuania closed its airports in Vilnius and Kaunas on Friday, October 25th and sealed its border crossings with Belarus after dozens of helium-filled weather balloons entered the country—the third such incident over the Baltic state this October.
European air traffic has been disrupted several times in recent weeks by drone sightings and other airspace intrusions, including at airports in Poland, Copenhagen, Munich, and the Baltic states.
Lithuania claims that smugglers are using balloons to transport Belarusian cigarettes into the European Union, where tobacco products are more expensive. Vilnius blamed Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko—a close ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin—for failing to stop the practice.
Similar balloons have landed on Lithuanian soil before, including near the airport. Border guards have had the right to shoot them down since last year, a policy since adopted by the UK near its military bases.
Lithuania also reported that two Russian aircraft entered its airspace on Thursday: a Su-30 fighter plane and an IL-78 tanker, both flying from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. In response, NATO scrambled two Eurofighter Typhoon jets from its Baltic air patrol service.
