{"id":81306,"date":"2026-05-13T06:42:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T06:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/81306\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T06:42:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T06:42:12","slug":"lithuania-briefly-shuts-vilnius-airport-again-blaming-smuggler-balloons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/81306\/","title":{"rendered":"Lithuania briefly shuts Vilnius airport again, blaming smuggler balloons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">STOCKHOLM, May 13 (Reuters) &#8211; Lithuania&#8217;s capital airport said \u200con Wednesday it \u200cbriefly halted operations overnight following \u200bthe detection of what was believed to be smuggler balloons from \u200cBelarus drifting \u2060into its airspace.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Vilnius Airport said on \u2060Facebook the airspace was closed for an \u200bhour, one \u200bof \u200bover a dozen \u200csuch incidents since October of last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Lithuania says smugglers use weather balloons to transport cigarettes \u200cacross the border, \u200band have \u200balso \u200bblamed Belarusian President \u200cAlexander Lukashenko, a \u200bclose \u200bally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, for not \u200bstopping \u200cthe practice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">(Reporting by \u200bAnna Ringstrom, editing by \u200bTerje Solsvik)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STOCKHOLM, May 13 (Reuters) &#8211; Lithuania&#8217;s capital airport said \u200con Wednesday it \u200cbriefly halted operations overnight following \u200bthe&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[43241,171,170,2743,2747],"class_list":{"0":"post-81306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vilnius","8":"tag-capital-airport","9":"tag-lithuania","10":"tag-vilnius","11":"tag-vilnius-airport","12":"tag-weather-balloons"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116565910929010099","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81306","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=81306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}