At a press conference late Sunday, National Crisis Management Center chief Vilmantas Vitkauskas said a military drone had likely crashed in Lithuania.
“Yes, it crashed, but there are no visible signs of an explosion. Whether it carried explosives or not is difficult to say at this point,” Vitkauskas said, adding that more precise information would be available once specialists returned from the crash site.
It remains unclear from which country the drone entered Lithuanian territory. However, the crisis center said preliminary indications suggest it was a Ukrainian drone.
“Based on the initial signs we can see in the wreckage sent by colleagues, this is most likely a Ukrainian drone,” Vitkauskas told reporters.
Drone incidents in Lithuania
On March 23, the Lithuanian military said a suspicious drone had entered the country’s airspace. It later crashed into a frozen lake about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Belarusian border.
Lithuania’s Defense Ministry said the drone was likely heading to attack the Russian port of Primorsk in the Leningrad region. Drone attacks on the Russian ports of Primorsk and Ust-Luga were reported overnight on March 23.
On March 25, Latvia’s Air Force detected a drone entering the country’s airspace from Russia.
A similar incident occurred in Estonia, where a drone struck the smokestack of a power plant in the village of Auvere. Estonian authorities later said it was a Ukrainian drone that had gone off course and that the intended target was Russia, not Estonia.
On March 27, the defense ministers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia called for stronger air defenses following the drone incidents in Baltic airspace.
The ministers noted that several foreign drones had crossed NATO airspace in the Baltic states that week.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said Kyiv had neither directed nor could have directed drones toward the Baltic states, commenting on the incidents involving drones that entered Lithuania and later Latvia and Estonia the previous week.