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Lithuania drone alert
Lithuania’s president and prime minister were rushed to shelters on Wednesday after a drone alarm over drone activity near the border with Belarus, with residents of Vilnius told to “immediately head to a shelter or a safe place.”
““immediately head to a shelter or a safe place.””
The alert lasted for about an hour and led to the closure of the airspace over Vilnius Airport, while NATO jets were deployed under the Baltic Air Policing mission to monitor and potentially intercept the threat.
Euronews said the mobile-phone warning was sent at about 10:20am local time and told people: “Air raid alert! Go immediately to a shelter or a safe place, take care of your family members and wait for further instructions.”
The Euronews report added that the alert was lifted at around 11:00am and people were told they could leave the shelters, after the army said a radar signal had been detected in Belarusian airspace “with characteristics typical of an unmanned aerial vehicle.”
Blame and political fallout
Ursula von der Leyen said after the alert that Russia and Belarus bore “direct responsibility” for drones endangering the lives and security of people on the bloc’s eastern flank, while NATO chief Mark Rutte said the drones were “there because of the reckless, illegal, full-scale attack of Russia.”
The Guardian reported that the defence ministry’s warning was sent at about 10.20am on Wednesday and lasted for about an hour, and that Lithuania’s president Gitanas Nausėda and prime minister Inga Ruginienė were rushed to bunkers along with cabinet members and MPs.
In Lithuania, AP quoted Vilnius resident Maryia Malevich saying she was terrified when the alert sounded and that “I and my colleagues, we went downstairs and waited probably for 30 minutes” before the all-clear notification came.
The Euronews account also said the alert was the first in an EU and NATO member country since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022 to trigger an order for the population, including the president, prime minister and MPs, to take shelter, and it noted that Latvia’s prime minister Evika Siliņa stepped down in a political row over the response to drones crash-landing in her country.
NATO stakes and next steps
Lithuanian officials later stated that the drone disappeared from radar and that investigations were continuing into its origin and intended destination, while Vilmantas Vitkauskas said the drone was “most likely either a combat drone or a drone designed to deceive systems and lure targets.”
““most likely either a combat drone or a drone designed to deceive systems”
The AP report said Belarus reported the potential drone to Lithuania and neighboring Latvia, citing Brig. Gen. Nerijus Stankevicius, and it described NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte commending the alliance’s reaction to several drone incidents in recent days as “a calm, decisive and proportionate response.”
CBC reported that NATO jets had orders to detect and destroy the drone but could not find it, and it quoted Vitkauskas saying “The electronic countermeasures here can’t tell us whether an explosive device detonated or not.”
Looking ahead, Euronews said the alert was lifted at around 11:00am and people were told they could leave the shelters, while Reuters reported that foreign ministers from NATO countries would meet Thursday and Friday in Helsingborg, Sweden, with Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand saying “bolstering and protecting NATO’s eastern flank” would be a predominant topic in Sweden.
