Whenever the wind blows northwest from Belarus, Lithuania braces for problems.
That’s when giant white balloons are launched across the border, crates of cheap cigarettes dangling beneath.
Over the past 10 weeks, the illicit balloon traffic has already forced Lithuania’s main airport into shutdown 15 times, stranding or delaying thousands of travellers.
On one occasion the airspace was closed completely for 11 hours.
But the government here is sure it is dealing with something far more hostile than smugglers.
It says the balloons have been “weaponised” in an act of hybrid warfare by Belarus, Russia’s closest ally. It is happening just as Moscow’s own shadow war on Europe is escalating again with a wave of arson and sabotage attacks that officials link to Russian intelligence.
The Lithuanian government has declared an emergency situation.
Balloons have been used by smugglers before, but this October their number suddenly surged.
“Of course it started as organised crime activity across the border, but we’ve seen more than once how Belarus instrumentalises organised crime to have an effect on neighbouring countries,” Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys told the BBC in the capital Vilnius.
He says the balloons are launched from spots that help them best “target” Lithuania’s main airport, just 30km (19 miles) from the border.
“If you want to make a smuggling operation to take a couple of thousand packs of cigarettes to the other side, you’d do it in the woods or the swamps, not directly at our airport!” the minister argues.
Instead, he believes the balloons are a form of political blackmail on Europe’s eastern edge.
“[Belarus] sees this as leverage: ‘You have a border with us, we can cause you huge problems’,” Budrys says. “What they’re doing is really touching the military and security field and we want to prevent a military escalation.”
Now every night the military police head out on patrol in the border zone. The balloons are most common after dark.
Credit: bbc.com
