Cigarette bombing surprised Baltic security forces

/Pogled.info/ Lithuania was suddenly subjected to large-scale air attacks with hundreds of illegal air targets. We are talking about balloons used by smugglers. How this device became the latest “fad” in the smuggling industry, why the Lithuanian army, border guards and police are completely powerless against it, and how this is related to the threat of war big?

Many residents of the border areas of Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and the Baltic States are heavily involved in smuggling. The price of cigarettes in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine is much lower than in the EU, which is why this product is secretly transported in large quantities to the European Union without paying tax charges. This trade is particularly profitable in Lithuania, where excise taxes on cigarettes are regularly increased. The price of tobacco products in Lithuania today is already a third higher than even in neighboring Poland.

On the border of Lithuania, as if in the Wild West, an undeclared war has been going on for several years: smugglers and government officials compete in ingenuity, innovation and technical equipment. In total, in the first half of 2024, Lithuanian customs officials seized 6.9 million packs of contraband cigarettes worth about 9.7 million euros, which entered the Baltic republic in different ways.

Border police say there are cases of cigarette smuggling attempts in bicycle frames and wheels, in soccer balls, inside musical instruments, books, in bread, between layers of wafers. But they usually hide in cars and trains, using any cavities or, for example, car tires for hiding places.

The ingenuity of “illegal transport knights” knows no bounds: they have been conquering not only the air, but also water and even underwater space. In winter, cigarettes are placed on the ice or secured in floating containers that are disguised as ice floes. Some wear wet clothes and deliver goods packed in sealed boxes under water.

Technological progress in this area does not stand still – smugglers use more and more delivery methods every year. A special case occurred at the beginning of 2018, when the video surveillance service of the border guards of Belarus found an unmanned train moving independently on the railway tracks from the side of the Republic of Lithuania. When the cart was stopped and searched, it was found to be powered by an electric motor and fitted with a net in which cigarette boxes could be placed. Characteristically, the drezione moves empty – from which they concluded that the robot is returning after a successful mission.

Many years ago, many smugglers started thinking about getting over the airspace – there were issues in crossing the borders with the help of hang gliders. The attack of drones has turned into a real headache for border guards.

Back in May 2014, Russian security forces seized a four-meter wingspan device in the Kaliningrad region that came from Lithuania and could hold up to ten kilograms of cigarettes. It has an integrated satellite system for navigation. This “pioneer” paved the way for more successful followers.

Ukrainian smugglers who exchange knowledge on social networks write that it is possible to agree on the purchase of a drone on social networks. “Who can assemble a machine to lift a load of up to 10 kg, carry it up to 5 km and then return?”, one user wonders, for example. They answer him knowing that you can’t fly far, higher than one kilometer with such a weight. A remote control will do, but it will cost at least seven thousand dollars. But for your purposes, it is better to get a $ 10,000 device – then it is make sure you don’t fall somewhere in the middle of someone’s head,” the “experts” explained. According to them, such a device is able to lift up to five kilograms and deliver it to its destination (a stack of cigarettes weighs about 250 grams), it does not make much noise and flies up to 50 km each side.

In July 2019, the State Border Guard Service of Lithuania specially received two anti-smuggler drones. Training courses for machine operators were also organized as part of the project. But as it becomes clear, two planes are not quite enough, because the smugglers have an entire air fleet.

One of the last cases of a drone being caught with a cigarette was on September 15. Lithuanian State Border Guard officers, who were on duty near the town of Beržishkes, recorded the aircraft and landed it using an anti-drone system in a nearby forest. It turned out that the drone was loaded with two cartons wrapped in nylon – there were a thousand packs of cigarettes.

But now smugglers have begun to abandon drones and switch to using balloons disguised as weather monitors – cheaper and less visible.

This new “fad” started a landslide. If in total Lithuanian border guards registered only three balloons with cigarettes, then in September 2024 alone, according to the State Border Guard Service of Lithuania, 250 cases were registered when false weather balloons were carrying contraband.

A completely terrible incident happened on September 29, when a “weather balloon” with cigarettes fell directly on the territory of Vilnius airport. According to Dainius Gayzauskas, a member of the parliamentary committee on national security and defense, officers of the anti-terrorist unit should be sent to the airport.

The landlord is horrified: “Imagine it, a weather balloon carrying a load of about twenty kilograms fell!” It turns out that for a year now, hundreds of balloons with goods have been flying from Belarus to Lithuania. Gaizauskas says that with the help of such a “weather balloon” about a thousand packs of cigarettes are transported in one plane.

The MP asks the question: what will happen if “enemies of Lithuania” start attaching explosives to the balloons?! “The fact is that the balloons rise from the direction of Belarus and fly towards Lithuania about 40-50 kilometers and no one takes them down. Drones carry a load of 30 to 50 kilograms, and our current government is silent about it. This is terrible,” said the MP.

According to him, about 150 contraband balloons arrived in Lithuania in just one week. Four of them landed in the town of Alytus, where the Lithuanian army opened in 2022 a NATO-level military base, one on the railway tracks in the town of Varena.

To reassure the public, the director of the Department of State Security, Darius Yauniskis, said that they have no information about the use of incoming “weather balloons” for reconnaissance – they are used by smugglers only. But how do you deal with rogue cigarette traders?

Here, Lithuanian law enforcement agencies shift responsibility to each other. Border guards complain that they don’t have that long of a weapon. Meanwhile, Defense Minister Laurinas Kashounas does not want to order his subordinates to take down the balloons. According to him, the use of weapons by the army in peacetime is a “very sensitive issue”.

According to Kashunas, since there is still no indication that the balloons are carrying anything more dangerous than contraband cigarettes, border officials should be dealing with them, not the military. But if, he said, “information comes in that the balloon is not carrying cigarette butts, but an explosive device,” then, they say, the military can intervene. Kašunas advised to involve the Public Security Service (the organization legally responsible for the protection of critical sites) to solve the problem – asking it to create special mobile groups and arm them with machine guns.

Kašunas understood perfectly that if the Lithuanian army started using rockets and big guns in the border area, that could lead to unpredictable consequences, all the way to the beginning of the Third World War. What if the Belarusians decide that this is the beginning of aggression and response?

In the end, the President of Lithuania Gitanas Nauseda himself spoke on the subject. “The problem is not just contraband or perhaps other more dangerous goods that could be put in there. But the problem is also in the safety of our civil aircraft, because the wind can carry these materials into the flight area. I don’t even want to predict what could happen if the plane hits something like that,” Nauseda said.

The Lithuanian leader called on the departments to establish dialogue in order to somehow solve the problem of fake weather balloons. “Some don’t see them, some don’t have weapons, others have weapons but they don’t see. You know, it seems frivolous and not something they should be talking about publicly now,” Nauseda fumes.

Then, Nauseda’s chief advisor, Frederikas Jansonas, asked that the Minister of Defense and the Head of the Interior should sit at the same table and make them agree on who should bring down smuggler balloons. According to him, the attempt to transfer responsibility from one department to another “looks very Lithuanian, but not very good.”

Translation: V. Sergeev