VILNIUS, Lithuania\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Residents of Lithuania\u2019s capital were told to take shelter and the country\u2019s president and prime minister were taken to safe locations Wednesday because of an alarm over drone activity near the border with Belarus, underlining jitters on NATO\u2019s eastern flank over incursions related to Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
An emergency announcement from the military urged people in the Vilnius region to \u201cimmediately head to a shelter or a safe place.\u201d <\/p>\n
The alert, which lasted for about an hour, also led to the closure of the airspace over Vilnius Airport. President Gitanas Nauseda and Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene were taken to shelters, and there was also an evacuation order at Lithuania\u2019s parliament, the Seimas, the BNS news agency reported.<\/p>\n
It was the first major alert that sent residents and political leaders in a European Union and NATO capital rushing to shelters since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of neighbor Ukraine in February 2022.<\/p>\n
It came hours after a NATO jet shot down a Ukrainian drone over southern Estonia. Ukraine apologized for that \u201cunintended incident,\u201d without specifying what had happened.<\/p>\n
NATO chief praises response to drone incursions<\/p>\n
Lithuania borders Russia-allied Belarus to the east and Russia\u2019s Kaliningrad exclave to the west. Wednesday\u2019s alert came after the military said it detected drone activity in Belarus, but no drones were sighted over Lithuania.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased on the parameters we saw, it\u2019s most likely either a combat drone or a drone designed to deceive systems and lure targets,\u201d Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of Lithuania\u2019s National Crisis Management Center, said in a news briefing. It wasn\u2019t possible to ascertain whether the drone had a warhead, he said.<\/p>\n
Belarus reported the potential drone to Lithuania and neighboring Latvia, according to Brig. Gen. Nerijus Stankevicius, commander of the Lithuanian Army\u2019s Land Forces.<\/p>\n
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte commended the alliance\u2019s reaction to several drone incidents in recent days, saying Wednesday in Brussels that they had been met with \u201ca calm, decisive and proportionate response.\u201d <\/p>\n
Vilnius residents sought shelter<\/p>\n
Vilnius resident Maryia Malevich said she was terrified when the alert sounded.<\/p>\n
\u201cI and my colleagues, we went downstairs and waited probably for 30 minutes\u201d before the all-clear notification came, she said. \u201cWe were unprepared and we didn\u2019t know what we should do. And even now, we don\u2019t know what really happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another Vilnius resident, Iuliia Dudkina, said she wasn\u2019t scared because her friends live in Israel and frequently have to head to shelters. She said her husband had a different reaction.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was actually very worried and asked me to take our dog and go downstairs to the underground garage. So I did it,\u201d Dudkina said. \u201cThere were no people except me. So I guess no one really got very scared.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drones crossing borders heighten tensions<\/p>\n
In recent months, Ukrainian drones aimed at Russia have crossed or come down in NATO territory on numerous occasions. Western officials have blamed what they say is likely Russian electronic jamming of the drones. Russia, meanwhile, has renewed threats that it would retaliate if Ukrainian drones are launched from Baltic countries or if those countries are complicit in their use against Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia is deliberately redirecting Ukrainian drones into Baltic airspace while waging smear campaigns\u201d against Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys said late Tuesday. \u201cIt\u2019s a transparent act of desperation \u2014 an attempt to sow chaos and distract from a simple reality: (Ukraine) is hitting the Russian military machine hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last week, Latvia\u2019s government collapsed following a dispute over the handling of multiple incidents involving stray drones suspected to be from Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Russia and Ukraine hammer each other with drones<\/p>\n
In a recent escalation of aerial attacks, Russia and Ukraine have sometimes fired hundreds of drones a day at each other.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s air force said Wednesday that it shot down 131 out of 154 drones that Russia launched overnight. The ones that got past air defenses killed three civilians and wounded 18 others, including two children, officials said.<\/p>\n
Ukraine, meanwhile, continued its aerial campaign against Russia\u2019s vital oil industry, with the General Staff reporting its drones struck a major Russian oil refinery and a pipeline pumping station overnight.<\/p>\n
Russian media reports also indicated that a chemical plant in the southern Stavropol region was hit and caught fire, although local officials didn\u2019t confirm any direct hit.<\/p>\n
Dapkus writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Siarhei Satsiuk in Vilnius, Lithuania, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Lorne Cook in Brussels, Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, Kostya Manenkov in Tallinn, Estonia, and Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VILNIUS, Lithuania\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Residents of Lithuania\u2019s capital were told to take shelter and the country\u2019s president and prime minister were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[93],"tags":[1410,1294,3213,45,46720,171,74,46719,16132,238,35069,2693,241,29507,170,24457],"class_list":["post-87421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vilnius","tag-belarus","tag-capital","tag-country","tag-drone","tag-eastern-jitter","tag-lithuania","tag-nato","tag-neighboring-latvia","tag-resident","tag-russia","tag-shelter","tag-southern-estonia","tag-ukraine","tag-ukrainian-drone","tag-vilnius","tag-wednesday"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116607650733353237","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87421","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=87421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}