On Wednesday, May 20, 2026, Lithuania closed the airspace over Vilnius International Airport at 10:00 AM local time. Twenty minutes later, every cell phone in the capital pinged with a message ordering residents into shelters.

The trigger was a single radar signature picked up over Belarus, with characteristics matching an unmanned aerial vehicle. The drone has not been found. It vanished from radar at 11:09 AM near Merkin”, and at the time of writing its location is still unknown.

The Lithuanian military got its first warning from across the border. Brig. Gen. Nerijus Stankevi’ius, commander of the Lithuanian Land Forces, said the report came directly from Belarusian armed forces flagging possible drone movement toward Lithuanian airspace.

The first alert was yellow. Within minutes it escalated to red. The National Crisis Management Center ordered schools and kindergartens to move children into shelters immediately, and the Seimas, Lithuania’s parliament, was evacuated.

President Gitanas Naus’da and Prime Minister Inga Ruginien” were both taken to safe locations. Public transport stopped. Vilnius Airport applied a zero-rate suspension, grounding outgoing flights and diverting inbound traffic. Two flights, SK744 and TK1407, were rerouted to Riga.

Two NATO Baltic Air Policing fighters launched from ?mari Air Base in Estonia. One was directed to Lithuanian airspace, the other to Latvia, which had issued its own airspace alert at the same time.