With this scheme to transport cigarettes from Belarus to Lithuania, the smugglers caused the temporary closure of the airport in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday.

The scheme is well known to the authorities and is not a first, but this time, the scale of the phenomenon paralyzed an airport: Vilnius, Lithuania. Dozens of "flying" balloons used by smugglers to transport cigarettes from Belarus to Lithuania caused the temporary closure of the capital's airport on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, the authorities announced.

The trick? Smugglers attach packets of Belarusian cigarettes to weather balloons to sell them in the European Union, where tobacco is more expensive. Last year, Lithuania recorded 966 similar balloons entering the country and more than 500 this year, according to official data released in early October. More than 100 similar incidents have also been recorded in neighboring Poland this year, according to border guards.

A similar incident disrupted operations at Vilnius Airport on October 5, when approximately 25 balloons violated Lithuanian airspace. Such devices have landed in Lithuania before, including at the airport earlier this year, and since 2024, border guards have had the right to shoot them down.

This wave of balloons was "the most intense"

But according to the head of the National Crisis Management Center (NCMC), Vilmantas Vitkauskas, the balloon wave on Tuesday was "the most intense this year." Therefore, it was decided to "suspend flights in order to ensure the safety of civil aviation," he said, as quoted by the Baltic news agency BNS. For the same reason, traffic was stopped overnight at two land border crossings between Lithuania and Belarus, at Medininkai and Salcininkai, before resuming on Wednesday, according to the Lithuanian border guard.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene called on the authorities in Minsk to cooperate to prevent further incidents of this nature, urging Belarus to adopt "a responsible approach to these incidents, regardless of our political relations." "It is not normal that so many balloons cross our border and that we have to intercept them to keep them away from our strategic installations and sites," she stressed to the press on Wednesday.

It should be recalled that Lithuania, a member of the EU and NATO, remains sensitive to violations of its airspace following incidents involving drones used by Russia that entered its territory from Belarus in July, one of which was carrying explosives.