NATO fighter jets twice failed to shoot down a drone over northern Lithuania overnight, in what the country’s president called a restless and difficult night.
Euronews reported that unidentified aircraft set off air-raid warnings across the three Baltic states and forced precautionary restrictions in Finland. The alarm began when three drones were picked up in Belarusian airspace heading north towards Latvia, before a fourth crossed into Lithuania at about 1.20am local time.
That drone briefly strayed into Polish airspace, turned back, and was tracked north by NATO jets. Two attempts to destroy it near Biržai failed, and one missile missed and fell to the ground. The drone then passed into Latvia, where alliance air-policing fighters could not get into position, before crossing Estonia and flying on into Russia.
Across the Baltics, residents were told to take shelter as the objects approached. Finland temporarily limited flights and shipping in the eastern Gulf of Finland, close to the Russian border. In Lithuania, around ten radar sightings linked to balloons also disrupted airports, holding up landings for three flights and roughly 470 passengers.
President Gitanas Nausėda called the night “restless and difficult” in a social media post and warned that combat drones could cross into Lithuania again. Vilmantas Vitkauskas, who heads Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre, went further, describing it as “the most unsettled in the country’s history”.
What the drone was, and who sent it, is still not clear. “We do not currently have confirmed information about the type of drone,” said Rear Admiral Giedrius Premeneckas, chief of the Lithuanian defence staff, who could not say whether it was Russian or Ukrainian. One theory, which he stressed was only an assumption, is that electronic jamming knocked a drone off course during a large Ukrainian strike on Russia the same night. Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius said the events would be “thoroughly investigated”.
Not the first scare on the eastern flank
The incursion is the latest in a run of nervous nights along NATO’s eastern edge. Only in September, alliance jets shot down a drone over Lithuania, and Baltic and Nordic members have reported a string of airspace violations and suspected sabotage as the war in Ukraine grinds on.
Officials have urged people not to panic while treating each alert seriously. In our reading at Portsmouth And, the worry is less any single drone than the steady blurring of the line between a war next door and the skies over NATO soil.
For now Lithuania says the episode will be investigated and its neighbours remain on alert. We will carry any update alongside our wider UK and world news as the picture becomes clearer.
Until then the Baltic states are left watching their skies, hoping the next restless night passes as quietly as a false alarm.
