Balloons filled with smuggled cigarettes keep drifting into Lithuania from Belarus, causing travel chaos.
Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė said at a press conference today that the Baltic country will shoot down the balloons and shut the borders.
Vilnius Airport was closed 4 times last week after balloons containing as many as 1,600 black-market cigarettes were blown into its airspace.
Airport officials said on Monday that 170 flights have been disrupted by the balloons, impacting greater than 27,000 passengers.
On Sunday alone, 47 flights to and from Vilnius Airport were cancelled, delayed or diverted, with radars picking up 66 objects travelling from Belarus into Lithuania.
Ruginienė added following a gathering of the National Security Commission: ‘We’re sending a signal to Belarus that no hybrid attack might be tolerated, and we’re taking the strictest measures to stop such attacks.’
The military will take ‘all needed measures’ to stop the balloons, Ruginienė said, declining to elaborate what she meant by this.
Lithuania might also discuss invoking NATO Article 4, which might force a gathering of the alliance to debate if a member is being ‘threatened’.
The Medininkai and Šalčininkai border crossings with Belarus have been closed, though diplomats can still jump over the lines and EU residents and Lithuanians can enter from Belarus.
Lithuania’s anti-drug smuggling laws might be strengthened, including tougher fines and possible prison sentences.
Tensions are already high after waves of drones have been whizzing above European airports, with many pointing fingers at Russia.
Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxim Ryzhenkov said Lithuania is ‘upsetting’ Belarus by closing the border.
The minister told local media, based on the Lithuanian news agency BelTA, that smugglers using the balloons is nothing latest.
‘But notably, we received no formal notes. They may not even discover what those balloons were or what they carried,’ he added.
Ryzhenkov said to shut the border with Belarus, a key ally of Russia, is ‘anti-Russian’.
Lithuania has struggled for greater than a yr with the contraband-carrying weather balloons, Ruginiene said.
‘Last yr, we were blind chickens and didn’t see many things. Thank God, there was no catastrophe,’ she added.
‘We didn’t see certain moving objects, so there have been no decisions to shut the airspace.’
If a plane were to smash into the balloons, the collision can be ‘dramatic’ as their cargo can weigh as much as 60kg, said Vidas Kšanas, safety director at Lithuanian Airports, an organization which manages Vilnius, Kaunas and Palanga airports.
Weather balloons are popular with drug smugglers within the Baltic country as they only cost as little as £10, with the helium to pump it tallying £150, experts told the Lithuanian news outlet tv3.lt.
Smugglers launch the balloons, intended to watch air pressure and humidity, by the border.
They rise as much as an altitude of as much as 8km, where border guards can now not see them, before catching the wind to travel at as much as 200kmph.
Smugglers likely attach GPS sensors to the balloons to trace where they land.
Lithuanian prosecutors have launched 13 pre-trial investigations into the weather balloons thus far.
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