According to the government, hot air balloons are used to smuggle cigarettes from Belarus. The country also closed the airport in Vilnius for more than an hour on Thursday for the same reason.
At the end of October, the Lithuanian government closed crossings with Belarus after repeated incidents with balloons that disrupted air traffic in the Baltic country. Hundreds of Lithuanian trucks got stuck in Belarus due to follow-up measures.
The country reopened its crossings on Thursday, although it originally planned to remain closed until the end of November. According to its words, the government decided to do so after several relatively calm weeks without major disruptions to airspace and air traffic, but at the same time warned that the border could be closed again if balloons or drones appear again.
Belarusian authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko called the border closure a “crazy betrayal” and accused the West of a hybrid war against Belarus and Russia.
