Drone crash exposes shelter failures and delayed air alert

A Ukrainian drone that crashed in Pasvalys district on Sunday came from Poland, Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas said after a meeting of the Government’s National Security Commission. The incident exposed delays in issuing an air-raid alert and failures by municipalities to unlock all shelters, LRT reported.

In Šiauliai, around half of the city’s 131 shelters were unlocked during the alert. Almost all shelters managed by the municipality were open, but officials said they would investigate why the others remained locked. The city’s preparedness officer, Paulius Stočkus, said some facilities may lack remote-opening systems and the people responsible for them may have been away. The municipality plans to expand the use of remote-opening mechanisms.

Fire and Rescue Department director Renatas Požėla said the department had previously asked all municipalities to ensure shelters were accessible around the clock during air attacks. He said it would repeat the request to make the requirement clearer.

The military said it first detected suspicious radar readings at 5:47 a.m., when the object was about 30 kilometres from Lithuania’s border, on Polish territory. Lithuanian troops contacted their Polish counterparts, who reportedly saw nothing suspicious. About 15 minutes later, the object crossed into Lithuania. The Emergency Response Centre received its first reports of a possible drone and unusual noise at 6:15 a.m.

The air-raid alert was issued about half an hour later, first around Kaunas and then in Pasvalys and Šiauliai. The drone crashed at 7:28 a.m. near the village of Juodžionys in Pasvalys district. NATO fighter jets were scrambled, and one resident’s car was damaged in the explosion.

Giedrius Premeneckas, head of the Lithuanian military’s Defence Staff, said the alert process took a different course because the object had come from a country in the Schengen area that Lithuania considers friendly, rather than from Russia or Belarus. Officials first had to determine whether it was potentially dangerous or a light aircraft flying without a flight plan.

Polish outlet Polsatnews, citing sources in Poland’s Defence Ministry, reported that the drone had been launched from Lithuanian territory about 30 kilometres from the Polish border and had not entered Polish airspace. Kaunas called the report a possible misunderstanding, saying the information was unofficial and that Lithuania would share its data with Polish officials.

In the summer, the minister publicly spoke about Kremlin plans for a false-flag operation involving Ukrainian drones and attacks from the Baltic states or Poland on Russian infrastructure, as well as attacks on critical infrastructure in NATO’s eastern-flank countries.