NATO fighter jets shot down a drone over Lithuania shortly after midnight on 15 September, the first time alliance aircraft have destroyed one over that country, LRT reported. The aircraft crossed in from Belarus and came down near a village in the center of the country, where military police sealed the site. Its type and operator have not been established.

What happened over Lithuania

Lithuania's National Crisis Management Center issued a yellow air alert after midnight, first for the capital and the districts around it, then for the Kaunas region further west. Italian Air Force Eurofighter Typhoons flying NATO's Baltic air policing mission from Šiauliai Air Base destroyed the drone with missile armament, Lithuania's Defense Ministry confirmed, and the army published the first images from the crash site.

The drone was over Lithuanian territory for about half an hour, crisis center head Vilmantas Vitkauskas told LRT radio. He said there is a high probability it carried an explosive charge, though the wreckage does not yet show whether it was a combat drone. Lithuania chose a yellow alert rather than red because red is used when a strike or a fall is unavoidable, he explained, and the drone was destroyed within seconds of the air defense crews reacting, over farmland with no homes nearby.

Military and civilian police are working at the site under the Shield security plan, and the area has been fenced off and guarded. President Gitanas Nausėda thanked the allied personnel for their swift response, saying that with Russia intensifying its aggression against Ukraine such readiness is vital for the region.

Whose drone it was

Nothing has been established beyond the direction it came from. The army has not commented on the drone's possible origin while the wreckage is still being collected, and the launch point also remains unreleased. Vilnius airport suspended operations during the alert, and flights from Türkiye and Iceland were delayed.

The same night as this incursion, Poland scrambled fighter jets and raised air defense readiness over Russian drone strikes on western Ukraine, and Romania did the same, with neither country recording a violation of its airspace. The day before, the Polish military recovered a drone from the Baltic Sea that its defense minister said preliminary inspection indicated was Russian and military.