Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
The pressure on NATO’s eastern flank arrived from two directions before sunrise on the same day.
Across the Baltic states and Poland, the past year has been a running series of airspace alarms, closed border crossings, and warnings from officials about the alliance’s most exposed edge.
Tuesday brought a new kind of morning in that pattern, one that arrived from the ground and from the air within hours of each other.
Just after midnight, an Italian Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon scrambled from the NATO air base at Šiauliai and shot down an unidentified drone over Lithuania at about 00:20 local time, the first drone brought down in Lithuanian airspace.
It came down near the village of Pratkūnai in the Kaišiadorys district, between Vilnius and Kaunas.
Hours later, the Belarusian General Staff opened a four-day command and staff exercise on training grounds in the Grodno and Brest regions, pressed up against the borders of Lithuania and Poland.
Two events, one morning
Lithuanian Air Force commander Colonel Antanas Matutis said “missile weaponry was used” to bring the drone down.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda wrote that “a drone that just entered Lithuanian airspace was destroyed by NATO fighter jets,” thanking allied personnel for what he called a swift response.
The head of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Center, Vilmantas Vitkauskas, told public broadcaster LRT that the aircraft most likely entered from Belarus and had been inside Lithuanian airspace for about 30 minutes before it was destroyed.
Authorities have not formally attributed the drone and said the incident needs further investigation.
The Belarusian exercise, running September 15 to 18, is led by Chief of the General Staff Pavel Muraveiko and involves the Western Operational Command.
Troops are drilling at the Gozhsky, Brestsky and Ruzhansky training grounds, plus additional areas in the two western regions that share a frontier with NATO.
Minsk calls it defensive
The Belarusian Defense Ministry said the drills cover “command and control of troops while securing the state border and enforcing martial law,” including the search for and destruction of enemy sabotage and reconnaissance groups, and countering light aircraft and drones.
Muraveiko rejected accusations that the maneuvers were preparation for aggression.
“We are not considering any offensive actions, and in this regard, various speculations, discussions, and claims – such as that the Belarusian Armed Forces are allegedly preparing to attack neighboring countries – are completely groundless and have no basis in reality,” he said in a statement carried by TASS.
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko struck a sharper note on a visit to Brest Oblast on September 11, saying the military was “preparing for war so that there will be no war”, according to Euromaidan Press, which noted at least eleven territorial troop events announced by Minsk since late March.
Pressure across the eastern flank
Poland and Romania scrambled fighters overnight in response to Russian drones operating in western Ukraine near the alliance’s border, though neither country reported airspace violations of its own.
Warsaw closed its remaining crossings with Belarus in September 2025 during the Zapad-2025 joint drills and has kept heavy troop deployments along the eastern border since.
The Belarusian drills open three days before Russia holds its State Duma elections on September 18-20, a period Kremlin-watchers have flagged as sensitive for signaling and mobilization on Moscow’s western neighbors.
Lithuania has kept a 90-kilometer no-fly zone along its border with Belarus, which the government extended in June and which now runs through January 2027.
