Balloons packed with smuggled cigarettes keep drifting into Lithuania from Belarus, causing travel chaos.
Vilnius Airport was closed four times last week after balloons containing as many as 1,600 black-market cigarettes were blown into its airspace.
Airport officials said on Monday that 170 flights have been disrupted by the balloons, impacting more than 27,000 passengers.
On Sunday alone, 47 flights to and from Vilnius Airport were cancelled, delayed or diverted, with radars picking up 66 objects travelling from Belarus into Lithuania.
Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė said at a press conference today that the Baltic country will shoot down the balloons and close the borders.
She added following a meeting of the National Security Commission: ‘We are sending a signal to Belarus that no hybrid attack will be tolerated, and we are taking the strictest measures to stop such attacks.’
The military will take ‘all necessary measures’ to stop the balloons,’ Ruginienė said, declining to elaborate what she meant by this.
Lithuania may also discuss invoking NATO Article 4, which would force a meeting of the alliance to discuss if a member is being ‘threatened’.
The Medininkai and Šalčininkai border crossings with Belarus have been closed, though diplomats can still hop over the lines and EU citizens and Lithuanians can enter from Belarus.
Lithuania’s anti-drug smuggling laws will be strengthened, including tougher fines and possible prison sentences.
Tensions are already high after waves of drones have been whizzing above European airports, with many pointing fingers at Russia.
Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxim Ryzhenkov said Lithuania is ‘provoking’ Belarus by closing the border.
The minister told local media, according to the Lithuanian news agency BelTA, that smugglers using the balloons is nothing new.
‘But notably, we received no formal notes. They could not even identify what those balloons were or what they carried,’ he added.
Ryzhenkov said to close the border with Belarus, a key ally of Russia, is ‘anti-Russian’.
Lithuania has struggled for more than a year with the contraband-carrying weather balloons, Ruginiene said.
‘Last year we were blind chickens and didn’t see many things. Thank God, there was no catastrophe,’ she added.
‘We didn’t see certain moving objects, so there were no decisions to close the airspace.’
If a plane were to smash into the balloons, the collision would be ‘dramatic’ as their cargo can weigh as much as 60kg, said Vidas Kšanas, safety director at Lithuanian Airports, a company which manages Vilnius, Kaunas and Palanga airports.
Weather balloons are popular with drug smugglers in the Baltic country as they only cost as low as £10, with the helium to pump it tallying £150, experts told the Lithuanian news outlet tv3.lt.
Smugglers launch the balloons, intended to monitor air pressure and humidity, by the border.
They rise up to an altitude of up to 8km, where border guards can no longer see them, before catching the wind to travel at up to 200kmph.
Smugglers likely attach GPS sensors to the balloons to track where they land.
Lithuanian prosecutors have launched 13 pre-trial investigations into the weather balloons so far.
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