VILNIUS (Reuters) -Lithuania’s Vilnius airport closed on Thursday due to smugglers’ balloons appearing on radar, Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre said.
Last month, the Baltic republic closed its border crossings with Belarus in response to airspace disruptions by weather balloons coming in from Belarus, but reopened them earlier on Thursday.
Lithuania has said the balloons, which have caused closures at Lithuanian airports, are flown by smugglers transporting contraband cigarettes and blames Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko for not stopping the practice, calling it a form of “hybrid attack”.
Air traffic incident reports had decreased in recent weeks, prior to Thursday’s closure of Vilnius airport.
(Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius, writing by Anne Kauranen in Helsinki)
