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Vilnius Airport was closed for 11 hours on Sunday because of balloons launched from Belarus, Lithuanian outlet Delfi reported. Temporary airspace restrictions were introduced at 6:09 p.m. on Sunday, when navigation systems detected objects resembling balloons moving toward Vilnius Airport. The restrictions were lifted at 5:00 a.m. on Monday, and the airport resumed normal operations.
Saulius Batavičius, director of Oro Navigacija, said a total of 60 balloons were launched, with 40 of them ending up in areas critical for incoming air traffic. Batavičius emphasized:
“The balloons were launched at specific intervals so they would remain constantly in areas critical for aircraft approaching Vilnius Airport. And all we could do was helplessly watch them in the air.”
More than 7,400 passengers and 50 flights were affected by the restrictions. Thirty-one flights were canceled, 10 were diverted to other locations, and nine were delayed. Batavičius called the incident “a systemic attack against civil aviation.” Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of the National Crisis Management Center, characterized Sunday’s events as “the height of cynicism.”
Delfi notes that even before Sunday, Lithuania’s airspace was seeing an unusually high level of balloon launches from Belarus. The wider wave began on Friday evening and continued until 6:30 a.m. on Monday. Several meetings of the National Security Commission have already been convened over balloons entering Lithuania from the Belarusian side, and the issue of Belarus’s hybrid attacks is being discussed at the national and international levels.
In May 2025, the Lithuanian government filed a lawsuit against Belarus at the International Court of Justice as part of an effort to hold the Belarusian regime accountable for orchestrating the large-scale entry of migrants into the country. According to Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry, the case concerns violations of state obligations under the UN Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants.