Contraband balloons have resulted in over €750K in damages, Lithuanian Airports say
Flights were disrupted once again on November 30, with the airspace closure above VNO lasting until the early morning hours on December 1.
Lithuanian Airports (Lietuvos Oro Uostai, LTOU) has quantified that the contraband balloon-related flight disruption damages have risen to more than €750,000 ($871,897), with the airspace above Vilnius Airport (VNO) being closed more than a dozen times in October and November.
Speaking with the Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT, Tadas Vasiliauskas, the spokesperson of LTOU, said that the financial damage caused by the contraband balloon-related flight disruptions has risen to more than €750,000 ($871,897), with the airspace above VNO being closed 13 times in October and November, including the latest closure between late November 30 and early December 1.
According to Vasiliauskas, around 5% of the total passengers had been affected by the airspace closures during the two-month period, with the balloons usually being launched from Belarus during the night and when winds are favorable for them to reach the territory of Lithuania.
Aleksandr Lukashenko, the President of Belarus, inadvertently admitted that Belarusian border guards certainly see balloons being launched from the country. “So what? You imposed sanctions against us, you are strangling us,” he stated in early November.
Meanwhile, the Prosecutor General's Office of Lithuania announced on December 1 that it has launched a pre-trial investigation for potentially violating Article 118 of the Criminal Code, which specifies that no person shall assist another state to act against Lithuania. The violation of the law carries a penalty of a prison sentence of up to seven years.
“The decision to initiate this pre-trial investigation was made after assessing the recent systematic recording of navigational marks and the balloons found in the territory of Lithuania with smuggled cargo, which has led to the airspace over Vilnius and Kaunas airports being restricted more than 10 times since October 2025, and the resulting threats to national security.”
In a press conference on December 1, Juras Taminskas, the Lithuanian Minister of Transport and Communications, admitted that during the past few weeks, hybrid attacks with contraband balloons have only intensified.
“We have agreed with LTOU that they will actively work with its partner airlines,” Taminskas added, noting that the agreement stipulates that Lithuania’s second-largest airport, Kaunas Airport (KUN), will have enough resources to take care of passengers whose flights divert from VNO to KUN, including providing bus transfers between the two cities.
“We just cannot let ourselves do nothing and constantly close down the airport.”
However, the ruling coalition, which has been embroiled in chaos since it was elected in October 2024, has not done much, if anything, during the past few months. In late October 2025, the government closed down the border crossings with Belarus for a month, yet caved in following pressure from road freight transportation companies, and reopened the land borders on November 19.
To add insult to injury, on November 26, a LOT Polish Airlines Embraer E170, registered as SP-LDK, slid off the runway as it taxied toward the terminal area at VNO, forcing the closure of the airport for several hours. The airport, which reopened at 03:55 local time (UTC +2) on November 27, issued a balloon-related ground stop from 23:15 on November 28.
VNO began operating flights at 07:03 on November 29 and at 18:09 on November 30, closed down once again until 05:00 on December 1.
Rytis Beresnevicius
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