The Lithuanian Armed Forces entered a third consecutive day of searching for an unidentified drone believed to have crossed into the country from Belarus on Wednesday.
"The search resumed this morning," Indrė Pilkauskaitė, a spokeswoman for the Lithuanian Armed Forces, told LRT.
Tuesday’s efforts focused on an area approximately 20 kilometres north of Kaunas, where military personnel, including the Military Police, conducted interviews with residents and deployed an Air Force helicopter as part of the operation.
"More than 100 people have been questioned over the past few days. A standby unit for peacetime operations and an explosives disposal team remain ready to step in to isolate and neutralise the object if it's found," Pilkauskaitė said.
"Today, the search efforts continue with the same capacity and will go on until we find it," she added.
The unidentified unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is believed to have entered Lithuanian airspace from Belarus early on Monday and may have flown over the country for an undetermined period. It has not yet been located.
Local residents first raised the alarm after being woken by an unusual noise. However, Chief of Defence General Raimundas Vaikšnoras later told reporters that the military had already detected the object while it was still over Belarusian territory.
On Tuesday, General Vaikšnoras said the search would continue "for a reasonable period of time" in order to assess whether the object poses a threat.
For his part, Vytautas Landsbergis, Lithuania’s first post-independence leader, said the drone believed to have entered Lithuanian airspace from Belarus should have been shot down as soon as it was detected.
"Those who failed to defend Lithuania from one lousy Eastern drone did very badly. They broke their oath as soldiers," Landsbergis wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.
"Any air trash that violates our border must be shot down," he added.
This marks the second incident in July involving a suspected drone incursion from Belarus. On July 10, a Russian-made Gerbera drone – designed to imitate the Iranian Shahed UAV and mislead air defences – crossed into Lithuania and crashed just three minutes after breaching the border.
In response to the recent incursions, General Vaikšnoras announced on Tuesday that a unit from the air defence battalion had been redeployed closer to the Belarusian border and placed on heightened alert.
"Air defence vigilance has been increased and a unit of the air defence battalion has been redeployed closer to the border, with the ability to detect with combined measures and, if necessary, to destroy," he said.
For security reasons, the general declined to provide details regarding the personnel, equipment or neutralisation measures deployed to the region.
Military analysts and some political figures have speculated that the two drone incidents could be connected to disorientation tactics used by Ukraine to interfere with Russian UAV navigation systems.
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