{"id":34051,"date":"2025-10-25T07:01:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T23:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/multimetro.hk\/plus\/2025\/10\/25\/lithuania-shuts-airports-belarus-border-crossings-after-balloon-sightings\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T07:01:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T23:01:00","slug":"lithuania-shuts-airports-belarus-border-crossings-after-balloon-sightings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multimetro.hk\/plus\/2025\/10\/25\/lithuania-shuts-airports-belarus-border-crossings-after-balloon-sightings\/","title":{"rendered":"Lithuania shuts airports, Belarus border crossings after balloon sightings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NATO member Lithuania closed its two biggest airports on Friday and shut crossings on its border with Belarus after helium weather balloons drifted into<br \/>its territory, the third such incident in the Baltic nation this month.<br \/>European aviation has repeatedly been thrown into chaos in recent weeks by drone sightings and other air incursions, including at airports in Copenhagen, Munich and the Baltic region.<br \/>The Vilnius and Kaunas airports were closed for safety reasons until 2 a.m. (2300 GMT), while the Belarus border crossings will remain shut until midday on Sunday, authorities said.<br \/>Lithuania has said balloons are sent by smugglers transporting contraband cigarettes, but it also blames Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, for not stopping the practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NATO member Lithuania closed its two biggest airports on Friday and shut crossings on its border with Belarus after helium weather balloons drifted intoits territory, the third such incident in the Baltic nation this month.European aviation has repeatedly been thrown into chaos in recent weeks by drone sightings and other air incursions, including at airports [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - 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