A drone was shot down in Lithuania overnight. It entered the country’s airspace shortly after midnight. An air-raid alert was declared. Vilnius Airport temporarily suspended operations.
At around 12:20 a.m., the drone was destroyed in the air. It was shot down in the Kaišiadorys area near Kaunas. Italian fighter jets based in Šiauliai were scrambled to intercept the drone.
According to preliminary information, the drone presumably entered Lithuania from Belarusian territory.
“Yes, from Belarus. Then Lentvaris, Trakai district, that is where the object was moving west from,” said Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of the National Crisis Management Centre, as reported by LRT.
During the night, Lithuanian military personnel and police found fragments of the downed drone near the settlement of Pratkūnai, which is located close to the Kruonis Pumped Storage Hydroelectric Power Plant.
This is the first case of a drone being destroyed in Lithuanian airspace. Previously, NATO fighter jets had already shot down drones in Latvia and Estonia.
