Original Coverage & Source Attribution: www.euronews.com
NATO fighter jets twice tried and failed to shoot down a drone over northern Lithuania overnight, as unidentified aerial objects triggered air-raid warnings across the Baltic states and prompted precautionary restrictions in Finland.
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Three unmanned aircraft were initially detected operating in Belarusian airspace and moving north towards Latvia. Latvia’s armed forces subsequently reported that two additional aerial targets entered Latvian airspace from the direction of Belarus and later departed.
A fourth drone crossed from Belarus into Lithuania at around 1.20am local time (12.20am CET). It briefly entered Polish airspace before abruptly changing direction and returning to Lithuania.
NATO fighter jets tracked it as it travelled north towards the Latvian border, but two attempts to destroy it near Biržai, in northern Lithuania, were unsuccessful. One of the missiles fired by the fighter jets missed the drone and fell to the ground.
The drone subsequently crossed into Latvia, where fighters on NATO’s air policing mission could not get into position to shoot it down, allowing it to cross into Estonia and eventually into Russia.
The drone’s type, origin and whether it was carrying explosives remain unknown.
“We do not currently have confirmed information about the type of drone,” Rear Admiral Giedrius Premeneckas, chief of the Lithuanian Armed Forces Defence Staff, said at a press briefing early on Wednesday. It was not yet possible to determine whether the aircraft was Ukrainian or Russian, he added.
Ukraine had carried out a large-scale drone attack on Russia overnight and, according to Premeneckas, one possibility was that the aircraft had been diverted from its intended course by electronic warfare measures. But he stressed that this remained an assumption.
Overnight, authorities in all three Baltic states issued warnings urging residents to seek shelter as unidentified aerial objects approached or entered their airspace. Further north, Finland temporarily restricted aviation and maritime activity in the eastern Gulf of Finland, close to the Russian border.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda called the night “restless and difficult” in a Facebook post, warning that more incursions were possible.
“Unfortunately, as long as Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine continues, the incursion of combat drones into Lithuanian territory may happen again,” Nausėda said, calling on Lithuanians to “remain patient and understanding.”
The latest incident follows a series of drone incursions across the Baltic region in recent months.
In October, a suspected drone entered Lithuanian airspace and exploded in the country’s north, triggering air-raid alerts and prompting NATO fighter jets to scramble. In September, NATO aircraft also shot down a drone over Lithuania, while an earlier incident in May saw a Romanian NATO fighter jet destroy a suspected Ukrainian drone over Estonia after it entered from Russia. Latvia has also reported repeated incursions, including a drone that struck an oil storage facility in May.
Wave of suspected meteorological balloons
In Lithuania, the drone activity on Tuesday night coincided with a separate wave of suspected meteorological balloons, further complicating the overnight response.
Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre, described the night as “the most unsettled in the country’s history,” citing both the drone incidents and the balloons.
He also noted that Belarusian authorities had informed Lithuania about objects detected on their side of the border that could potentially be moving towards Lithuanian airspace.
“This is a welcome development. Such cases have been rare recently,” he said, referring to the information passed on by Belarus.
Around 10 balloon-related radar sightings were recorded, disrupting airport operations. Aircraft were allowed to depart, but landing operations were restricted, affecting three flights and forcing around 470 passengers to change their plans, Vitkauskas said.
He also warned against disinformation circulating online suggesting Lithuania was allowing Ukrainian drones to use its airspace to attack Russia.
“That is an absolute lie,” he said, urging residents to follow official emergency instructions and not to ignore alerts sent to their phones.
The National Security Commission was also due to discuss access to public shelters on Wednesday, with Vitkauskas acknowledging that reaching shelters during a night-time emergency can be difficult. Residents without access to a shelter were advised to follow the two-wall principle, stay away from windows and seek refuge in a basement where possible.
“The events of last night will be thoroughly investigated,” Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius said in a Facebook post.
