Whenever the wind blows northwest from Belarus, Lithuania braces for problems. That's when giant white balloons are launched across the border, with crates of cheap cigarettes dangling beneath. Over the past ten weeks, this illicit balloon traffic has already forced Lithuania's main airport into shutdown 15 times, stranding or delaying thousands of travelers. 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 Vilnius. He says the balloons are launched from spots that best "target" Lithuania's main airport, just 30 km (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. Rattling across fields to reach remote country roads, they set up mobile checkpoints and stop vehicles at random. Officers check drivers' documents and search car boots, hoping to uncover networks behind the balloon launches.
The balloons fly too high for air defenses to shoot them down safely or economically, so the government has offered a €1m (£870,000) prize to any firm that can figure out how to intercept them. In the meantime, teams use military radar to track the balloons and try to catch smugglers collecting their dropped cargo. Soon, new criminal charges should act as a deterrent, with possible prison sentences for acts of sabotage against civil aviation. So far, the best protection has been a change in wind direction. When the wind blew east into Belarus one recent night, soldiers patrolling the border only found boxes full of Christmas shopping, not contraband. "I haven't seen any balloons—it hasn't affected us personally," one driver said after a spot check. "But we live really close to the border and this whole situation really does worry us."
The border itself is now marked by a tall metal fence topped with coils of barbed wire and lined with concrete blocks. These barriers show clearly how Lithuania now views its neighbor—and its ally Russia—as hostile and dangerous. In Minsk, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko dismisses all talk of hybrid warfare as "nonsense." He blames "bandit" smugglers seeking profit and creative ways to overcome the new security fence. Lithuania doesn't accept that explanation, partly because Belarus has a history of "hybrid" attacks. In 2021, migrants were helped to cross into Lithuania and Poland in large numbers, deliberately creating a border crisis.
Other signs also suggest state involvement. In Vilnius, Vilmantas Vitkauskas, who runs the national crisis management center, says that previously smugglers sent balloons in clusters to overwhelm defenses. "Now they are doing a sequence of one or two balloons every 30 minutes, aimed directly at the airport," he explains, standing in front of a digital map tracking balloon sightings this year. "In Lukashenko's Belarus… if they were interested in stopping it, they could do it tomorrow. But they don't. That means it benefits them."
The suspicion is that Belarus is trying to pressure Lithuania to ease sanctions. "They want to attract political attention and force us to change our policies towards Belarus," says Foreign Minister Budrys. The EU still refuses to recognize Lukashenko as president after disputed 2020 elections and a brutal crackdown that followed. Sanctions imposed then were tightened in 2022 when he supported Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "First, they want to end the international isolation of the regime, and number two, of course, the sanctions," Budrys argues. Although the US recently agreed to lift some sanctions on Belarus—prompting the release of 123 prisoners including opposition activist Maria Kolesnikova—Budrys calls for a tougher European response. "We have to expand the sanctions regime against Belarus to include hybrid activities against the EU," he says. "That was done with Russia, but not with Belarus."
For now, travelers and airlines in Lithuania are adapting. "This is something completely new for the aviation sector—none of the airports in Europe experienced that," says Simonas Bartkus, CEO of Vilnius Airport. One airline has already relocated its charter flights to Lithuania's second city, and another has cut evening services to Vilnius.
Bartkus estimates the total loss of revenue for affected businesses will reach €2m by the end of the year. "The extra cost for us and the airlines is one thing," he admits, "but the bigger risk is if passengers start to lose trust in air travel." Travelers now check a new webpage that forecasts wind direction and balloon risks before booking flights. "It's not easy, it makes me a little bit nervous. I'd just like to get home as planned," said a Polish passenger waiting in the terminal. "For the last week we were checking every day," added a local woman, Justina. "We believe this is a hybrid attack on us. I think for them it's really funny to fly those balloons and then laugh at us, not dealing with it."
Her words reflect another goal of hybrid attacks: to sow discontent and political division. "They're basically testing the limits of NATO—looking how we protect against these kinds of things," says her partner, Martynas. "And we can't even fight, like, simple balloons. We're not even prepared for the basic stuff."
