Balloons from Belarus paralyze airports in Vilnius and Kaunas

Capital affected

Balloons from Belarus paralyze airports in Lithuania

It was only on Wednesday that flying objects disrupted airport operations in Lithuania. Now such an incident happened again. This is known about the trigger.

In Lithuania, flight operations at Vilnius and Kaunas airports have been suspended following the sighting of weather balloons suspected to have flown in from Belarus. For security reasons, traffic at both airports was initially suspended until 10 p.m., but the deadline was later extended by another four hours to 2 a.m. This was announced by the Transport Ministry of the Baltic EU and NATO country in Vilnius.

The balloons are commonly used by smugglers to illegally send cigarettes from authoritarian neighboring Belarus to Lithuania. It initially remained unclear how many of them entered the airspace. According to the National Crisis Management Center, several dozen navigation points representing flying objects were detected on the radars.

Initially only a few flights were affected by the ban, which was imposed at 8:31 p.m. in Vilnius and at 8:36 p.m. in Kaunas. Due to the incident, Lithuania’s border guards also temporarily closed the two open border crossings with Belarus in Medininkai and Salcininkai – initially until Saturday at 12 noon, according to Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene.

Vilnius Airport was temporarily paralyzed by balloons on Wednesday night. It was the third incident this month.