Lithuanian Capital City Suspends Flights Due to Drone Warning

The airport in Lithuania’s capital city of Vilnius suspended flights on May 20 due to a drone warning, the country’s national crisis management center said.

The alert was issued after a drone was seen in the neighbouring nation of Belarus flying toward Lithuania, the center said, adding that the drone’s origin had not been confirmed. Citizens in Vilnius were asked to take shelter.

The sighting was the latest in a series of security incidents in the Baltic nations.

Lithuania, a NATO and European Union member state, suspended train traffic in and around the capital. Schools were told to bring children to shelters during the incident, which lasted for nearly an hour.

“Immediately take shelter in a safe place, take care of your close ones, await new recommendations,” Lithuania’s army said in a message to people in the capital.

Air and train traffic have since resumed, but air warnings were still in place for some parts of the country.

A warning was also issued in the Vilnius parliament building, where lawmakers and government ministers were present.

Lithuanian Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said that military aircraft were seeking to neutralize the threat.

“The NATO Air Policing Mission is activated and targeting a drone detected in Lithuanian airspace,” Kaunas told Reuters at an underground shelter.

The Lithuanian incident follows a spate of drone violations in the Baltic. On May 19, a Romanian NATO fighter jet on a training flight shot down a suspected Ukrainian drone over Estonia at 12:14 p.m. local time.

“The unmanned aerial system was likely of Ukrainian origin,” the Estonian military said in a statement.

“The incident occurred under the conditions of heavy electronic warfare, including GPS spoofing and jamming, by Russia.”

The military further stated that the drone had been under constant monitoring before entering Estonian airspace, and that the target was “visually identified” before being taken down.

The same day, Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics dismissed a Russian accusation that his country was allowing Ukraine to prepare drone launches from its territory.

“Russia is lying by claiming that Latvia allows any country to use Latvian airspace and territory to strike Russia or any other country,” he wrote on X.

A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry also dismissed Moscow’s claims about drone attacks against Russia originating in Latvia, labeling them “falsehoods.”

Earlier on May 19, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said Kyiv was preparing to make an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) strike from Latvian territory, as well as from other Baltic states.

Russia then doubled down on May 20 on its assertion that Kyiv was using the Baltic nations to launch UAV attacks, saying its military is closely monitoring drone activity through Baltic airspace and is formulating a response, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

“One way or another, drones are already entering through the airspace of the Baltic states. This is a problem,” he told state-run outlet Izvestia, adding that Moscow’s primary objective is to ensure the safety of Russian citizens and its industrial infrastructure.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte called the Russian claims “ridiculous.”

“If drones come from Ukraine, they are not there because Ukraine wanted to send a drone to Latvia, Lithuania, or Estonia. They are there because of the reckless, illegal, full-scale attack of Russia,” Rutte told reporters in Brussels.

He added that NATO had shown a “calm, decisive, and proportionate response” to the Ukrainian drone that was downed by a Romanian fighter jet in Estonian airspace the previous day.

Reuters contributed to this report.