Residents were told to take shelter and Lithuania’s president and prime minister were taken to safe locations because of an alarm over drone activity near the border with Belarus, underlining jitters on Nato’s eastern flank over incursions related to Russia’s war with Ukraine.
An emergency announcement from the military on Wednesday told people in the Vilnius region to “immediately head to a shelter or a safe place”.
The alert, which lasted for about an hour, also led to the closure of the airspace over Vilnius Airport.
President Gitanas Nauseda and Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene were taken to shelters, and there was also an evacuation order at Lithuania’s parliament, the Seimas, the BNS news agency reported.
It was the first major alert that sent residents and political leaders in a European Union and Nato capital rushing to shelters since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“Based on the parameters we saw, it’s most likely either a combat drone or a drone designed to deceive systems and lure targets,” Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre, said in a news briefing.
“The electronic countermeasures here can’t tell us whether an explosive device detonated or not.
“It’s very, very difficult.”
Based on the altitude and speed, it was probably a drone, he said, “though we can’t say at this stage exactly what kind of drone it was or where it was launched from”.
Lithuania borders Russia-allied Belarus to the east and Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave to the west.
Wednesday’s alert came after the military said it detected drone activity in Belarus, but no drones were sighted over Lithuania.
Belarus reported the potential drone to Lithuania, according to Brigadier General Nerijus Stankevicius, commander of the Lithuanian Army’s Land Forces.
Officials “received a report from the Belarusian armed forces regarding drones potentially moving toward Lithuanian territory… Our neighbors in Latvia received similar information,” Brig Gen Stankevicius told reporters.
On Wednesday, Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte commended the alliance’s reaction to several drone incidents in recent days, saying that they had been met with “a calm, decisive and proportionate response”.
“This is exactly what we planned and prepared for,” he said, blaming Russia’s war on Ukraine for the problem.