Lithuania accuses Belarus and Russia of

The government of Lithuania, which is a member of the U.S.-led NATO alliance, said Monday it will begin shooting down unidentified balloons that enter the country’s airspace, after several of them allegedly launched from neighboring Belarus forced the repeated closure of a major airport.

Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene warned on Monday that any further balloons detected would be shot down after operations at Vilnius International Airport, which serves the capital, were halted a total of four times last week.

“Today we have decided to take the strictest measures, there is no other way,” Ruginiene told reporters, according to Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT, calling the incidents “hybrid attacks” and saying his country could discuss invoking the collective defense clause of NATO’s founding treaty over the incidents.

Article 4 can be invoked by any NATO member that feels its security is at risk, prompting talks between allies to discuss the threat. Article 4 has been invoked nine times in NATO history, three of which related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Lithuania believes smugglers use balloons to transport smuggled cigarettes across the border, but has criticized Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, for not taking drastic action.

“Inaction is also action,” Ruginiene said after a meeting of his country’s National Security Commission on Monday. “If Belarus does nothing about it and does not fight, we will also evaluate these actions accordingly.”

Ruginiene added that his government would close its land border with Belarus indefinitely, except for diplomats and returning European Union citizens, according to LRT.

“Thus we send a signal to Belarus and say that no hybrid attacks will be tolerated here, we will take all the strictest measures to stop such attacks,” he said.

“Our response will determine how far the autocrats dare to go,” Ruginiene’s office said in a statement sent later Monday to News themezone.

There was no immediate comment on the incident from officials in Belarus.

“Calculated provocations”

The airspace of many of the United States’ European allies has been violated in recent weeks, primarily by unclaimed drones spotted nearby. airports and military installations in Germany, Denmark and the Baltic countries. Estonia too Russian fighter jets accused to fly over its airspace for 12 minutes in mid-September.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys said in a social media post on Monday that NATO was facing a “deliberate escalation of hybrid warfare by Russia and its proxy, Belarus,” calling the spate of recent airspace incursions “calculated provocations designed to destabilize, distract and test the determination of NATO”.

He called for new sanctions against Belarus and stricter NATO security measures to deter airspace violations.

On October 23, a Russian Sukhoi SU-30 fighter jet and an IL-78 tanker flew just under half a mile into Lithuanian territory, according to the country’s Foreign Ministry, after departing from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. The coastal territory of the Baltic Sea is separated from the rest of Russia and is bordered on both sides by Lithuania and Poland.

Two days earlier, several “weather balloons” launched from Belarus were detected by Lithuanian radar systems in the country’s airspace, disrupting travel at Vilnius airport, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported.

Lithuania summoned Belarus’ top diplomat in the country on October 22 to express “strong protest at the repeated and increasingly frequent violations” of its airspace, warning the Russian ally that Vilnius “reserves the right to take appropriate retaliatory measures.”

Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Center said earlier this month that at least 544 balloons had already entered Lithuanian airspace this year, according to News themezone sister network BBC News. The center said 966 such balloon incursions were recorded during 2024.

“Last year we were blind birds and we didn’t see a lot of things,” Ruginiene said Monday. “Thank God there was no catastrophe. We did not see certain moving objects, so the decision to close the airspace was not made.”

“Today we have much better equipment, we can see much more information,” he said, according to LRT. “We believe we must take action to protect our citizens.”