{"id":337891,"date":"2026-05-20T18:42:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T13:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/?p=337891"},"modified":"2026-05-20T18:42:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T13:12:32","slug":"planes-grounded-after-drone-spotted-at-vilnius-airport-news-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/2026\/05\/20\/planes-grounded-after-drone-spotted-at-vilnius-airport-news-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Planes grounded after drone spotted at Vilnius Airport | News World"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Members of Lithuania\u2019s parliament needed to shelter in place (Picture: Reuters)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Residents of Vilnius were told to take shelter, and\u00a0Lithuania<\/strong>\u2018s president and prime minister were taken to secure locations after an alarm over drone activity near the border with Belarus went off.<\/p>\n

The incident comes amid rising jitters in NATO\u2019s eastern bloc over incursions related to Russia\u2019s war with Ukraine.<\/p>\n

An emergency announcement from the military told people within the Vilnius region to \u2018immediately head to a shelter or a secure place\u2019.<\/p>\n

The alert, which lasted for about an hour, also led to the closure of the airspace over Vilnius Airport. <\/p>\n

President Gitanas Nauseda and Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene were taken to shelters, and there was also an evacuation order at\u00a0Lithuania\u2019s parliament, the Seimas, the BNS news agency reported.<\/p>\n

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Flights were grounded briefly over the incursion (Picture: Getty)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Lithuania has needed to cope with aerial threats since Vladimir Putin\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine back in 2022.<\/p>\n

Vilnius Airport was shut a staggering nine times in reference to unusual balloon swarms.<\/p>\n

\u2018Based on the parameters we saw, it\u2019s almost certainly either a combat drone or a drone designed to deceive systems and lure targets,\u2019 Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of\u00a0Lithuania\u2019s National Crisis Management Centre, said in a news briefing.<\/p>\n

\u2018The electronic countermeasures here can\u2019t tell us whether an explosive device detonated or not. It\u2019s very, very difficult.\u2019<\/p>\n

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Residents sheltered in an underground automotive park (Picture: AP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Based on the altitude and speed, it was probably a drone, he said, \u2018though we will\u2019t say at this stage exactly what type of drone it was or where it was launched from.\u2019<\/p>\n

Lithuania\u00a0borders Russia-allied Belarus to the east and Russia\u2019s Kaliningrad exclave to the west.<\/p>\n

Belarus reported the potential drone to\u00a0Lithuania, in accordance with Brigadier General Nerijus Stankevicius, commander of the\u00a0Lithuanian Army\u2019s Land Forces.<\/p>\n

In recent months, Ukrainian drones aimed toward Russia have crossed or come down in NATO territory on quite a few occasions.<\/p>\n

Western officials have blamed what they are saying is probably going Russian electronic jamming of the drones.<\/p>\n

Russia, meanwhile, has renewed threats that it might retaliate if Ukrainian drones are launched from Baltic countries or if those countries are complicit of their use against Russia.<\/p>\n

Get in contact with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

For more stories like this, <\/strong>check our news page<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Arrow<\/title>\n<\/use><\/svg>MORE: Putin seen walking awkwardly after stepping out of automotive at China summit<\/span><\/p>\n

Arrow<\/title>\n<\/use><\/svg>MORE: Putin might regret launching Ukraine invasion, China\u2019s Xi tells Trump<\/span><\/p>\n

Arrow<\/title>\n<\/use><\/svg>MORE: Russia and Belarus launch massive nuclear weapon drills \u2018with 64,000 soldiers\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

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Members of Lithuania\u2019s parliament needed to shelter in place (Picture: Reuters) Residents of Vilnius were told to take shelter, and\u00a0Lithuania\u2018s president and prime minister were taken to secure locations after an alarm over drone activity near the border with Belarus went off. The incident comes amid rising jitters in NATO\u2019s eastern bloc over incursions related […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":337892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20691],"tags":[11637,13599,7680,395,20464,1016,51941,813],"class_list":["post-337891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-airport","tag-drone","tag-grounded","tag-news","tag-planes","tag-spotted","tag-vilnius","tag-world"],"aioseo_notices":[{"message":"The permalink for this post just changed! This could result in 404 errors for your site visitors.","status":"warning","options":{"id":"0a2ae5f84bc2c0423042ed7ec22d2e40","isDismissible":true,"actions":[{"url":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/wp-admin\/admin.php?page=aioseo-redirects","label":"Add Redirect to improve SEO","class":"aioseo-redirects-slug-changed"}]},"allowedContexts":["posts"]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337891"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337894,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337891\/revisions\/337894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebiztoday.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}