"And This Is The Main Difference Between The Lithuanian Authorities And Belarus"
- 20.05.2026, 12:25
A Belarusian blogger in Vilnius commented on the air alert.
On May 20, an air alert was announced in Vilnius and Vilnius County due to a drone-like radar signature recorded near the border with Belarus. Authorities urged residents to take shelter, temporarily closed the airspace over the airport and activated a NATO air police mission.
What was happening in Vilnius after the air alert was declared? How did people react to the warnings and calls to move to shelters? Charter97.org spoke to blogger and former political prisoner Dmitry Kozlov ("Gray Cat"), who is now in Vilnius, about this:
- In Vilnius, app alerts sounded, and warnings went off on phones that the Lithuanian Armed Forces were reporting an air threat. People were advised to find safe places or nearby shelters. Lithuanian Telegram channels, in particular "Wave", informed that schoolchildren and students were evacuated.
Public transportation was stopped, airport and flights were suspended due to the fact that a drone was flying nearby.
But polls in the same Telegram channel - for example, whether you are in a shelter - showed that the majority answered: no, not in a shelter, or in an apartment, in a safe place. That is, about 60% of respondents said they were not in a shelter, and 22% said they were just somewhere safe in an apartment. We can say that people reacted calmly and assessed the degree of threat.
- Could the appearance of the drone near the border with Lithuania be a deliberate provocation on the part of Russia and Lukashenko's regime?
- I think it is. Because how the drone appeared unnoticed near the border with Lithuania from the side of Belarus?
Propaganda Russian and Belarusian media say that it is the REB systems that deflect Ukrainian drones. So this is the version voiced by the Kremlin. But these may well be Russian drones, and there may indeed be military devices there. We know that such situations have already happened in Poland: there drones exactly Russian drones flew in.
So yes, it is quite realistic that this is a provocation by the Kremlin. But experts say the plan of attack could be a blackout, power and communications blackout. It looks more like a provocation or an attempt to test the behavior of the Baltic states - in particular, how Lithuania will react. Putin may be lapping it up, they probably have some variation of attack plans.
- Lithuanian authorities immediately turned on the warning system and urged people to go down to shelters. In Belarus, Russian "Shaheds" regularly fly over populated areas and even fall, but the Lukashenko regime is silent. Why doesn't the dictator warn people about the danger?
- In European countries, including Lithuania, people are treated as human beings. First of all they think about their safety. Therefore, it is better to be reinsured, as we see even now. Although the threat is not directly critical: somewhere near the border a drone is spotted - and they already stop flights, evacuate schoolchildren.
And in Belarus these drones are falling on people's heads. Lukashenko's regime doesn't care. He pretends it doesn't exist. We remember what it was like during the coronavirus: Lukashenko simply said it wasn't there. People were dying, tens of thousands died, and he pretended that nothing was happening and played a clown.