Minister says military answered questions over Sunday airspace incident

Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas says the military has provided clear answers about a possible airspace violation on Sunday, although some information cannot yet be made public, LRT reported on Wednesday.

“The information has been provided to me, but it is restricted. The questions I raised have definitely been answered,” Kaunas told parliament.

He said he had also contacted Poland’s defence minister, and the two countries had agreed to jointly investigate the origins of drones found in Lithuania’s airspace and on the Polish coast. Kaunas did not say whether the object detected in Lithuania on Sunday was connected to the drone later found in Poland.

At 4:05 a.m. on Sunday, military air force radars near Varėna detected an object crossing Lithuanian territory and entering Russia’s Kaliningrad region. No air raid warning was issued in Lithuania. Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of the National Crisis Management Centre, said decision-makers had been informed in time, but authorities decided not to alarm residents because of the object’s flight path and the time of the incident.

Kaunas had been dissatisfied with explanations from military representatives on Monday about why residents were not informed of the possible air threat. He then requested that an expert group be formed to examine the situation. He said the main questions concerned the time and trajectory of the object’s flight.

The minister said it was still not possible to publicly confirm whether the military had detected the drone crossing the border from Lithuania into Russia. He also acknowledged that the military may have rushed to release information about the object’s flight.

“This is sensitive information because by commenting on it we also reveal our technical capabilities to Russia,” Kaunas said. He added that he was satisfied with the investigation and had received detailed information. The minister said the military had agreed that it would be better to provide more accurate information rather than act too quickly.

On Sunday afternoon, residents in several regions, including Vilnius, received warnings about a possible air threat and were told to identify a safe place. The warning was later cancelled after radar data was determined to have shown a flock of birds.

On Tuesday night, Italian fighter jets stationed in Šiauliai shot down a drone that had entered Lithuania from Belarus near the Kruonis pumped-storage hydroelectric plant in Kaišiadorys district. Residents of Vilnius and Kaunas counties also received warnings of a likely air threat while the drone was flying over Lithuanian territory.