Context: Vilnius declared a state of emergency across Lithuania over airborne balloons carrying contraband arriving from Belarus. This means the military will be able to check documents of people on the country’s territory, inspect vehicles and their cargo, and conduct personal searches or inspections. As the authorities explain, the state of emergency was introduced not only in border areas but nationwide, because it is impossible to predict where the wind will carry the contraband weather balloons.
Lithuanian authorities do not want to address their citizens’ problems and instead choose a “besieged fortress paradigm, where cigarettes fall from the sky and your neighbor is to blame for everything,” said Yauhen Horyn, host of the “Topic of the Day” segment on the First Information Channel. To support this claim, he cited another of Belarus’ neighbors as an example.
“But the Poles also share a border with Belarus. So why don’t balloons carrying contraband fly there? Cigarette prices in the EU are the same. It’s some kind of anomaly,” the host said.
In fact, balloons carrying contraband also fly into Poland. Polish border guards report such incidents regularly. For example, in Podlaskie, three weather balloons carrying about 4,500 packs of cigarettes were found over three days, from October 19 to October 21. Since the beginning of the year, more than 120 such cases have been reported.
In November, the Polish Border Guard reported three cases of contraband being transported by balloons. At the time, illegal cigarettes worth about $27,500 were found. Since the start of 2025 alone, the Nadbużański Border Guard unit has recorded more than 50 instances of tobacco products being transported using weather balloons.