“But the investigation is ongoing. Without having the object in hand, it is very difficult to state, but based on the parameters recorded, it was most likely an unmanned aerial vehicle,” V. Vitkauskas told LRT radio on Sunday.
“Since the accuracy has not yet been fully determined, it is too early to speculate,” he emphasized.
As reported by the Lithuanian Armed Forces, at 4:05 a.m. on Sunday, military air force radars near Varėna detected an object crossing the country’s territory and entering the Russian Kaliningrad region. It is likely that it came from Belarus.
According to V. Vitkauskas, residents also heard the object’s flight; however, the head of the State Border Guard Service explained that it is difficult to precisely identify the object via radars.
“It is simply a point moving at a certain speed, at a certain altitude, over a certain area – there are not many components to judge by,” V. Vitkauskas said.
“Radars have very limited capability to determine precisely,” he added.
According to V. Vitkauskas, the object moved quite clearly towards the Russian Kaliningrad region and flew about 60–70 kilometers in Lithuanian airspace: “Enough time to cause damage.”
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He also said that it will be investigated what the reaction of Belarusian and Russian services was when the object crossed their airspace.
The head of the State Border Guard Service did not rule out that it could have been a smuggler’s drone, of which 22 have already been recorded in September alone.
“Wind directions were not favorable for balloons, so smugglers are thinking of alternatives. We sometimes detect those unmanned objects (used for smuggling – BNS),” V. Vitkauskas said.
The military announced that the available data was insufficient to precisely identify what kind of object it was, but no direct threat to Lithuanian residents or objects was detected.
As BNS wrote, in recent years, seven suspected Russian equipment-affected Ukrainian drones with explosives have flown into Lithuania.
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