Lithuania\u2019s prime minister has authorised the shooting down of smuggling balloons that cross the border from Russia\u2019s ally Belarus, calling them \u201chybrid attacks\u201d in an echo of the term used to describe Moscow\u2019s destabilisation efforts.<\/p>\n
Incursions by balloons carrying contraband cigarettes<\/a> prompted the Nato and EU member state to close Vilnius airport four times last week and shut its border crossings with Belarus temporarily.<\/p>\n \u201cToday we have decided to take the strictest measures, there is no other way,\u201d Inga Ruginien\u0117 said on Monday, adding that her government may also discuss invoking article 4 of Nato\u2019s treaty to call security consultations.<\/p>\n Vilnius has said the balloons are being sent by smugglers, but blames the authoritarian president of Belarus<\/a>, Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, for not stopping them.<\/p>\n Ruginien\u0117 told a press conference the incidents were \u201chybrid attacks\u201d and announced the closure of Lithuania\u2019s Belarus border crossings except for travel by diplomats and by EU citizens leaving the neighbouring country.<\/p>\n Flights in and out of Lithuania\u2019s main airport were disrupted on Friday and again on Saturday night in the latest of a string of incidents involving suspected sightings of cigarette smugglers\u2019 balloons, leading to dozens of cancellations and diversions.<\/p>\n Those incidents followed similar disruption early last Wednesday morning and on other recent occasions, leading to the closure of Lithuania\u2019s two border crossings with Belarus, at Medininkai and \u0160al\u010dininkai, for several hours.<\/p>\n Lithuania, which borders Russia\u2019s Kaliningrad exclave as well as Belarus, also summoned a Russian diplomat last week in protest at what it said was the entry of two Russian planes into its airspace on Thursday.<\/p>\n The country\u2019s defence ministry said a Sukhoi SU-30 fighter and an IL-78 tanker from Kaliningrad passed through Lithuanian airspace for 700 metres (2,300ft) before leaving after 18 seconds, probably during aerial refuelling training.<\/p>\n The foreign ministry said it had summoned Russia\u2019s charg\u00e9 d\u2019affaires and issued a \u201cstrong protest\u201d, urging Moscow to explain the reasons for the violation immediately and take \u201call necessary measures to prevent such incidents from happening again\u201d.<\/p>\n Russia\u2019s defence ministry denied the incursion had taken place. \u201cThe flights were conducted in strict compliance with the rules for using airspace above Russian territory. The aircraft \u2026 did not violate the borders of other states,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to This is Europe<\/p>\n The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans \u2013 from identity to economics to the environment<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The three Baltic countries, which are Nato members and firm supporters of Ukraine, have all been exposed to violations of their territory by Russian planes or drones. Three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets spent 12 minutes in Estonian airspace in September.<\/p>\n European aviation has 0 been thrown into chaos repeatedly in recent weeks by drone sightings and other air incursions, including at airports in Copenhagen, Munich and the Baltic region. Moscow has previously denied involvement.<\/p>\n Lithuania\u2019s foreign minister, K\u0119stutis Budrys, said on Monday that recent airspace violations should not be regarded as isolated incidents. \u201cThese are calculated provocations designed to destabilise, distract [and] test Nato\u2019s resolve,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lithuania\u2019s prime minister has authorised the shooting down of smuggling balloons that cross the border from Russia\u2019s ally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-106962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}