Lithuania reports damage caused by unidentified drone that entered its airspace

An unidentified drone that violated Lithuanian airspace on Sunday damaged a civilian car. No injuries have been reported so far, said Vilmantas Vitkauskas, Head of Lithuania's Risk Management and Crisis Prevention Bureau.

Source: Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT, as reported by European Pravda

Details: Vitkauskas said the drone, which is believed to have entered the country on Sunday, crashed near a civilian car that was passing by.

Quote: "It appears that the red warnings advising people not to do this [be outside – ed.] were not followed. Of course, people may not have heard them or may have thought it was safer to reach the nearest point and take shelter there. It is difficult to assess why this happened, but perhaps the most important thing is that nobody was injured."

Details: Vitkauskas said the area where the drone is believed to have fallen is still being searched. Some debris and components have been found, but not all of them. The area has been cordoned off, and searches are being conducted both from the air and on the ground. Once all the parts have been recovered, experts hope to establish the object's origin.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius said there is currently no definitive information on whether the drone had carried explosives.

"A man travelling from Biržai to Pasvalys heard an explosion, and debris damaged his car, denting the door. Clearly, some kind of explosion occurred; at least, that is the preliminary information received from a person who was at the scene," he added.

Law enforcement officers will establish how and why the explosion occurred, and whether it happened in the air or after the drone collided with an obstacle, such as a tree, the prime minister said.

Sinkevičius said the warning system had been activated, but had not worked perfectly, as the response and alerts had come only from the Kaunas district.

"However, according to our data and radar information, the drone entered our airspace from the direction of Poland," he noted.

The prime minister said that timely warnings to fighter jets and the execution of the air defence mission are important aspects.

"Clearly, following these events, we will have to consult our NATO partners on how we respond, because these are not isolated incidents but recurring ones," the prime minister said.

He added that he does not know "whether everything had worked properly on the Lithuania-Poland border".

Background:

• On Sunday morning, Latvia and Lithuania issued air-raid warnings over an unidentified aerial asset, and allied military aircraft were deployed.
• Debris of a suspected drone was later found in the village of Juodoniai in Lithuania's Pasvalys district.
• Lithuanian Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas said the object that entered the country's airspace on Sunday morning had not been shot down because difficult weather conditions prevented its visual identification.
• Meanwhile, an object that may have violated Polish airspace is being searched for near Lublin.

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