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Lithuania’s Vilnius airport shut over suspected balloon airspace disruption
Lithuania's Vilnius airport said on Saturday it had again halted operations due to suspected balloons appearing in its airspace.
1 min readDec 6, 2025 11:55 PM IST
First published on: Dec 6, 2025 at 11:05 PM IST
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Lithuania's Vilnius airport said on Sunday it had temporarily halted operations due to suspected balloons in its airspace. (File Photo) Lithuania’s Vilnius airport halted operations after balloons appeared in its airspace, it said on Saturday, in the latest in a series of interruptions of the Baltic nation’s air traffic in recent months.
Air traffic will be closed until 1905 GMT, the governmental National Crisis Management Centre said.
The airport, located some 30 km (19 miles) from Belarus, has been closed more than 10 times since early October over similar incidents, and was last closed on December 3.
Lithuania says balloons are sent by smugglers transporting cigarettes from Belarus, but also blames Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, for not stopping what it calls a form of “hybrid attack”.
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