{"id":21261,"date":"2026-02-22T23:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T23:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/21261\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T23:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T23:00:11","slug":"lithuania-suspends-air-traffic-over-capital-due-to-balloons-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/21261\/","title":{"rendered":"Lithuania suspends air traffic over capital due to balloons \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Belarus has repeatedly launched such balloons, ostensibly to smuggle cigarettes across its border with Lithuania. The stunts have drawn international outrage and caused Lithuania to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/tvpworld.com\/89734333\/balloons-eu-slams-belarus-as-lithuania-announces-border-closure\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">close its border<\/a>\u00a0with its unruly eastern neighbor for a month until Nov. 30.<\/p>\n<p>Both European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Ant\u00f3nio Costa\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/balloon-incursions-warrant-new-belarus-sanctions-lithuania-kestutis-budrys-says\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">condemned <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/balloon-incursions-warrant-new-belarus-sanctions-lithuania-kestutis-budrys-says\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Belarus&#8217; actions<\/a>\u00a0on Monday night, calling them a \u201chybrid threat.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginien\u0117\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/lithuania-plans-permanently-shuts-down-border-belarus-after-smuggling-balloons-incidents\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">said Oct. 27<\/a>\u00a0that her country intends to permanently close its border with Belarus and shoot down any balloons entering Lithuanian airspace.<\/p>\n<p>Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/alexander-lukashenko-bite-back-lithuania-balloon-border-closure\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">subsequently called<\/a>\u00a0Lithuania\u2019s decision to close the border \u201cabsurd\u201d\u00a0and\u00a0\u201ca crazy gamble.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belarus has repeatedly launched such balloons, ostensibly to smuggle cigarettes across its border with Lithuania. The stunts have&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[1410,11997,171,170],"class_list":{"0":"post-21261","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vilnius","8":"tag-belarus","9":"tag-hybrid-threats","10":"tag-lithuania","11":"tag-vilnius"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}