Lithuanian officers seized a record number of contraband cigarettes in 2025 – more than 4.4 million packs, the State Border Guard Service (VSAT) reported on Friday.
This is the largest annual amount of illegal cigarettes seized in the three decades since Lithuania's restoration of independence in 1990, with 352 people detained for smuggling offences.
The crackdown was prompted by the increasing use of contraband balloons, which have also been grounding flights in Lithuania due to the safety threat they posed to civil aviation.
Officials linked the uptick in smuggling balloons to a hybrid attack from Belarus.
In total, border guards seized 4,440,600 packs in 2025, which is more than three times the result for 2024, valued at around 21.1 million euros.
The border guards also said there were more attempts to smuggle cigarettes from Latvia to Lithuania, which had not been observed before.
In all, 50.1 percent of the cigarettes detained by the State Border Guard Service were brought across the EU internal border from Latvia, 49.2 percent came from Belarus, and 0.3 percent from Russia. The route of another 0.4 percent of contraband entering Lithuania is unknown.
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