{"id":497968,"date":"2025-11-22T13:11:05","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T10:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=497968"},"modified":"2025-11-22T14:22:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T11:22:23","slug":"lithuania-intercepts-10-weather-balloons-and-detains-8-suspects-in-two-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/lithuania-intercepts-10-weather-balloons-and-detains-8-suspects-in-two-days","title":{"rendered":"Lithuania Intercepts 10 Weather Balloons and Detains 8 Suspects in Two Days"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Over two days, Lithuania\u2019s State Border Guard Service (SBGS) intercepted 10 weather balloons carrying 12,300 packs of Belarusian cigarettes and detained eight suspects. The information was reported on Saturday to the news agency Elta by SBGS spokesperson <strong>Giedrius Mi\u0161utis<\/strong>, LRT writes.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cEight people were detained over two days. Six of them were detained on the first day, the remaining two on the next. The court extended the detention of six suspects for one month; the decision on the remaining two will be made separately,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p>\n<p>The suspects were detained in the Vilnius, Var\u0117na, Raseiniai and K\u0117dainiai districts. As is typical in such cases, a GPS device was attached to the balloons.<\/p>\n<p>According to the SBGS, 115 people have been detained this year on suspicion of involvement in transporting contraband by air.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cIn total this year, border guards have intercepted more than 1 million 340 thousand packs of cigarettes arriving from Belarus by air. This figure also includes cargo delivered by drones, though most of it is transported using balloons,\u201d<\/em> Mi\u0161utis stated.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, 604 thousand packs of contraband cigarettes transported by air were intercepted and 46 suspects were detained. This year\u2019s figures are more than double.<\/p>\n<p>Recently, operations at Vilnius Airport have been disrupted several times due to balloons arriving from Belarus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over two days, Lithuania\u2019s State Border Guard Service (SBGS) intercepted 10 weather balloons carrying 12,300 packs of Belarusian cigarettes and detained eight suspects. The information was reported on Saturday to the news agency Elta by SBGS spokesperson Giedrius Mi\u0161utis, LRT writes. \u201cEight people were detained over two days. Six of them were detained on the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":497672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/69219cf655a9c.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"Lithuania Intercepts 10 Weather Balloons and Detains 8 Suspects in Two Days"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142339,142338],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-497968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main","category-news"],"wps_subtitle":"","permalink_manager":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}