Finance
Lithuania capital airport closes again over balloons
Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on November 30, 2025
1 min readLast updated: January 20, 2026
Global Banking and Finance Review
Company
Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on November 30, 2025
1 min readLast updated: January 20, 2026
Vilnius airport in Lithuania closed due to balloons, causing flight disruptions. Lithuania blames Belarus for hybrid attacks using weather balloons.
VILNIUS, Nov 30 (Reuters) - Lithuania's Vilnius airport said on Sunday it had temporarily halted operations due to suspected balloons in its airspace, the latest in a series of flight disruptions in the Baltic nation.
European aviation has repeatedly been thrown into chaos in recent months by drone sightings and incursions, including in Copenhagen and Brussels, and the Vilnius airport has been closed at least 10 times since early October.
The Baltic country has said weather balloons flown by smugglers are transporting contraband cigarettes, and blames Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko for allowing the practice, calling it a form of "hybrid attack".
Lithuania in October closed both crossing points on the Belarus border in response to balloons, but reopened them last week as the air traffic interruptions appeared to have stopped.
Lukashenko called the border closure a "crazy scam", accusing the West of fighting a hybrid war against Belarus and Russia, ushering in a new era of barbed-wire division.
(Reporting by Andrius Sytas, editing by Terje Solsvik)
Airspace violation occurs when an aircraft enters a restricted or controlled airspace without permission, potentially posing risks to safety and security.
A weather balloon is a large balloon filled with gas that carries instruments to collect data about the atmosphere, including temperature, humidity, and pressure.
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