NATO fighter jets were scrambled on Tuesday night after Latvia and Lithuania warned of an airspace threat linked to an object in Belarus heading towards the Baltic states. Residents in border areas of both countries were told to take shelter, and Vilnius Airport was temporarily closed before the alerts were lifted.

Latvia's National Armed Forces issued an orange-level air threat alert for the regions of Ludza, Krāslava and Augšdaugava, urging residents to take cover indoors. Lithuania's National Crisis Management Centre said NATO fighters on the Baltic air defence mission had been scrambled in response to an object in Belarus flying towards the Baltics, Reuters reported.

What happened on Tuesday night

In Lithuania, a code yellow alert was broadcast at around 11pm, urging people in Vilnius and Utena counties to head for their nearest shelter. The warning also covered areas including Kaunas, the country's second city. Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of the National Crisis Management Centre, told Lithuanian radio station LRT that the object had yet to be identified, and that the suspected drone may have been as close as 18 miles from the Lithuanian border. Fighter jets were placed on standby.

Vilnius Airport and the surrounding airspace were shut down during the alert but reopened once it was called off. In Latvia, the orange alert was lifted around an hour after it was issued. No injuries were reported in either country, The Sun reported.

A pattern of Baltic airspace alerts

The alert follows a series of similar incidents along NATO's eastern flank. On 1 November, Latvia's armed forces reported that an unidentified object briefly entered the country's airspace near the borders with Belarus and Russia, close to the towns of Krāslava and Ludza. The object left Latvian airspace about 30 minutes later, and the military said the threat had ended.

In that incident, Latvia deployed a domestically made BLAZE interceptor drone, which was then deliberately destroyed near the Russian border to prevent it from crossing into Russian territory. The object's type and origin were never officially established. Drones have also strayed into the airspace of Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in recent months, raising concern that the war in Ukraine is spilling over into NATO countries bordering Russia and its ally Belarus.

Why the Baltic states are on alert

Latvia and Lithuania sit on NATO's north-eastern flank, sharing borders with Russia and Belarus. Neither country has its own fighter jets, so both rely on the NATO Baltic Air Policing mission, under which allied aircraft patrol their skies and can be scrambled at short notice.

That dependence means every unidentified object near the border triggers a rapid response, including public warnings telling residents to go indoors and follow the two-wall rule. Authorities have repeatedly stressed that the alerts are precautionary and that the public should follow official announcements rather than share unverified images of military activity.

What is not yet known is what the object spotted on Tuesday night was, or whether it entered Latvian or Lithuanian airspace at all. Officials have not named an operator or a country of origin, and no wreckage has been reported. The episode underlines how quickly a single radar contact near the Belarus border can now put two NATO capitals on alert.