Belarus has informed the Lithuanian side that it possesses a photo of the person who allegedly launched a reconnaissance drone carrying white-red-white flags from Lithuanian territory. This was stated in an interview with the TV channel Pervy Informatsionny by Alyaksandr Valfovich, state secretary of the Security Council.
Valfovich insisted that the drone entered Belarusian territory from Lithuania. He described the incident as a provocation.
“The president instructed us to conduct a detailed investigation of this incident. The facts are clear, as we say. The trajectory embedded in the ‘brains’ of this unmanned aerial vehicle was fully uncovered. The drone took off from Lithuanian territory. What else can this be called but a provocation? Instead of resolving the conflict, this is an attempt to inflame it. Of course, one could have blown this up into a political scandal as well, but we do not want to quarrel with our neighbours,” the state secretary said.
He again claimed that after flying over Belarus, the drone was allegedly intended to continue into Poland in order “to pit the two states against each other.”
“The person who launched the drone has been identified through camera footage. The search for this unmanned aircraft operator is under way. Our special services continue their work. Naturally, the Lithuanian leadership has been notified through diplomatic channels. There has been no response, as far as I know. We tell them: if you want to find a solution, you need to sit down at the negotiating table. You need to look for smugglers on Lithuanian territory who organise this in the first place, and those who help them in Belarus. But without constructive cooperation between special services and law enforcement bodies, this issue cannot be resolved,” Valfovich stressed.
The Belarusian official then launched into a repetition of key propagandistic talking points, claiming that Lithuanians themselves were to blame for balloons flying into their territory.
“The facts are on the table, as the president says. Show us the balloons — where they fall, what they carry, what they contain. There is no specific information from the Lithuanian leadership on this matter. And apparently no desire on the part of Lithuania’s political leadership to resolve this conflict. It benefits them; they need it. That is why they inflate the situation, showing how poor and unfortunate they are, how they protect the borders of the European Union. This is where the deeper cause lies,” the state secretary concluded.
***
Belarus’s Foreign Ministry previously stated that on 30 November a drone entered Belarus from Lithuania and fell in Hrodna. Belarus described the incident as a “deliberate provocation.” The Interior Ministry claimed the drone was equipped with a “photo and video camera capable of gathering intelligence data” and had dropped “extremist” items — white-red-white flags. The Lithuanian drone manufacturer Granta Autonomy acknowledged that the drone shown on Belarusian television resembled its older Hornet XR model but had been modified.
Lithuania’s defence minister called Belarus’s statements about the drone a fake.