A drone has crashed in the Utena district of northern Lithuania, with initial assessments suggesting it is of Ukrainian origin, authorities have said.
The National Crisis Management Centre (NKVC) said it received reports at around 19:00 local time on Sunday that a drone had been found crashed in a field near Samanė village.
At a press conference that evening, NKVC director Vilmantas Vitkauskas said the aircraft appeared to be a military drone, though he cautioned that further details were pending.
"It has crashed, but there are no signs of an explosion. Whether it carries a warhead or not is difficult to say at this stage," Vitkauskas said, adding that more precise information would be available once a specialist team had returned from the scene.
Lithuanian military radar did not detect the drone earlier in the day, according to the armed forces. The incident was reported by local residents/
The Shield (Skydas) emergency response plan was activated following the incident. Police and other services are working at the site, and residents have been asked to keep their distance and not to touch the object or any debris. Anyone with relevant information is urged to call the emergency number 112.
Authorities have also called on the public to refrain from sharing unverified information or the precise location of the find on social media, warning it could hamper the emergency response.
It is not yet clear how the drone entered Lithuanian airspace. However, a similar incident occurred in March, when a Ukrainian military drone came down on Lake Lavysas in the Varėna district, near the Belarusian border. Authorities said at the time that it had been destabilised by Russian electronic warfare systems while on a mission targeting Russia.
Such incidents have become more frequent across the Baltic Sea region in recent months.
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