{"id":56060,"date":"2025-12-09T11:51:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T11:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/56060\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T11:51:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T11:51:09","slug":"lithuania-declares-national-emergency-over-security-risks-posed-by-balloons-from-belarus-ap-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/56060\/","title":{"rendered":"Lithuania declares national emergency over security risks posed by balloons from Belarus | Ap-world"},"content":{"rendered":"

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) \u2014 Lithuania\u2019s<\/a> government on Tuesday declared a national emergency over security risks posed by balloons from Russia-allied Belarus<\/a> that have violated its airspace in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

Tensions between Lithuania and Belarus have escalated<\/a> after meteorological balloons from Belarus forced Lithuania to repeatedly shut down its main airport in the past weeks, leaving thousands of people stranded.<\/p>\n

In a statement, the government cited \u201cnational security interests\u201d and \u201cthe danger\u201d to human life, property and the environment from the balloons that have carried \u201ccontraband\u201d from the former Soviet neighbor \u2014 actions some consider a form of hybrid warfare.<\/a><\/p>\n

The announcement followed a Cabinet meeting of the Baltic state, which is a NATO member and strong backer of Ukraine in its fight against the Russian forces<\/a> who launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe emergency was declared because of disruptions to civil aviation and because of national security concerns. There is a need for closer coordination between the institutions,\u201d Interior Minister Vladislavas Kondratovi\u010dius told the meeting.<\/p>\n

Kondratovi\u010dius said the emergency measures would be narrowly targeted.<\/p>\n

While the balloons are used to smuggle cigarettes into Lithuania, officials in Vilnius see their numbers and trajectories as deliberate acts of disruption orchestrated by Belarus.<\/p>\n

Europe overall has been on high alert after drone intrusions<\/a> into NATO\u2019s airspace<\/a> reached an unprecedented scale in September and the Russian invasion of Ukraine nears its fourth year.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) \u2014 Lithuania\u2019s government on Tuesday declared a national emergency over security risks posed by balloons…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,38,30976,13687,50,301],"class_list":{"0":"post-56060","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-headlines","10":"tag-allentown-news","11":"tag-general-news","12":"tag-lithuania-national-emergency-balloons-belarus","13":"tag-national-security","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}