An emergency announcement from the military urged people in the Vilnius region to “immediately head to a shelter or a safe place.”
People take shelter in an underground car park during an air raid alert in Vilnius, Lithuania, Wednesday, May 20, 2026. Residents of Vilnius were ordered into shelters and airspace over the Lithuanian capital was briefly closed after suspected drone activity near Belarus, the most dramatic NATO-capital alert since Russia’s 2022 invasion.
The scare followed a NATO jet downing a Ukrainian drone over Estonia and a string of stray drones over Baltic states, deepening anxiety along the alliance’s vulnerable eastern flank. With Russia and Ukraine trading hundreds of drones in nightly barrages, alleged Russian jamming and new threats against Baltic states are raising fears of miscalculation pulling NATO closer to conflict.
Residents of Lithuania’s capital were told to take shelter and the country’s president and prime minister were taken to safe locations Wednesday because of an alarm over drone activity near the border with Belarus, underlining jitters on NATO’s eastern flank over incursions related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. An emergency announcement from the military urged people in the Vilnius region to “immediately head to a shelter or a safe place.
” The alert, which lasted for about an hour, also led to the closure of the airspace over Vilnius Airport. President Gitanas Nauseda and Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene were taken to shelters, and there was also an evacuation order at Lithuania’s parliament, the Seimas, the BNS news agency reported.
It was the first major alert that sent residents and political leaders in a European Union and NATO capital rushing to shelters since Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighbor Ukraine in February 2022. It came hours after a NATO jet shot down a Ukrainian drone over southern Estonia. Ukraine apologized for that “unintended incident,” without specifying what had happened. Lithuania borders Russia-allied Belarus to the east and Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave to the west.
Wednesday’s alert came after the military said it detected drone activity in Belarus, but no drones were sighted over Lithuania.
“Based on the parameters we saw, it’s most likely either a combat drone or a drone designed to deceive systems and lure targets,” Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Center, said in a news briefing. It wasn’t possible to ascertain whether the drone had a warhead, he said. Belarus reported the potential drone to Lithuania and neighboring Latvia, according to Brig. Gen.
Nerijus Stankevicius, commander of the Lithuanian Army’s Land Forces. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte commended the alliance’s reaction to several drone incidents in recent days, saying Wednesday in Brussels that they had been met with “a calm, decisive and proportionate response. ”Vilnius resident Maryia Malevich said she was terrified when the alert sounded.
“I and my colleagues, we went downstairs and waited probably for 30 minutes” before the all-clear notification came, she said. “We were unprepared and we didn’t know what we should do. And even now, we don’t know what really happened. ” Another Vilnius resident, Iuliia Dudkina, said she wasn’t scared because her friends live in Israel and frequently have to head to shelters.
She said her husband had a different reaction.
“He was actually very worried and asked me to take our dog and go downstairs to the underground garage. So I did it,” Dudkina said.
“There were no people except me. So I guess no one really got very scared. ”In recent months, Ukrainian drones aimed at Russia have crossed or come down in NATO territory on numerous occasions. Western officials have blamed what they say is likely Russian electronic jamming of the drones.
Russia, meanwhile, has renewed threats that it would retaliate if Ukrainian drones are launched from Baltic countries or if those countries are complicit in their use against Russia.
“Russia is deliberately redirecting Ukrainian drones into Baltic airspace while waging smear campaigns” against Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys said late Tuesday. “It’s a transparent act of desperation — an attempt to sow chaos and distract from a simple reality: is hitting the Russian military machine hard. ” Last week, Latvia’s government collapsed following a dispute over the handling of multiple incidents involving stray drones suspected to be from Ukraine.
In a recent escalation of aerial attacks, Russia and Ukraine have sometimes fired hundreds of drones a day at each other. Ukraine’s air force said Wednesday that it shot down 131 out of 154 drones that Russia launched overnight. The ones that got past air defenses killed three civilians and wounded 18 others, including two children, officials said.
Ukraine, meanwhile, continued its aerial campaign against Russia’s vital oil industry, with the General Staff reporting its drones struck a major Russian oil refinery and a pipeline pumping station overnight. Russian media reports also indicated that a chemical plant in the southern Stavropol region was hit and caught fire, although local officials didn’t confirm any direct hit. Dapkus writes for the Associated Press.
AP writers Siarhei Satsiuk in Vilnius, Lithuania, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Lorne Cook in Brussels, Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, Kostya Manenkov in Tallinn, Estonia, and Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal contributed to this report. Rebuilding L.A. : Recovery, From The People’s Perspective: ‘It’s About To Get A Lot Worse’ About 2 in 3 fire survivors are still displaced and, as coverage for temporary housing disappears, that number could get increase.
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