NATO is grappling with an unusual but increasingly disruptive challenge along its eastern border: balloons filled with helium or hydrogen drifting in from Belarus into the airspace of Lithuania and Poland. At first glance, the objects appear almost farcical—low-tech, slow-moving, and carrying no explosives or weapons. Instead, they are typically laden with bundles of cigarettes, smuggled across borders where tobacco prices are sharply lower in Belarus than in neighbouring European Union states.
Yet for NATO officials, military planners, and security analysts, the issue is no laughing matter. The balloon incursions are forcing airspace closures, triggering radar alerts, diverting resources, and fuelling fears that what looks like organised smuggling may also double as a form of hybrid warfare—testing the alliance’s readiness, response times, and political cohesion at a moment of heightened confrontation with Russia and its closest ally, Belarus.
Over the past week alone, balloon intrusions have repeatedly disrupted aviation in Lithuania and Poland. On January 27, Lithuanian authorities reported about 42 balloon flights entering the country’s airspace from neighbouring Belarus, forcing Vilnius airport to halt operations multiple times. Air traffic controllers, uncertain about the nature of the objects and unable to rule out security risks, temporarily grounded civilian flights as a precaution.
The following night, Poland’s military operational headquarters announced that Polish airspace had been closed to civilian flights after “balloon-like objects” were detected. While the command later said no direct threat to national security had been identified, it characterised the episode as part of a broader “catalogue of hybrid activities” Poland has been experiencing along its eastern frontier.
For Lithuania, the problem is far from new. Officials say hundreds of such balloons have violated Lithuanian airspace since at least the fall of 2025. The cumulative effect of repeated incursions, flight disruptions, and public unease led Vilnius to declare a statewide emergency in December, underscoring the scale of the challenge posed by what might otherwise be dismissed as criminal smuggling.
According to Lithuanian authorities, Belarus was responsible for launching roughly 600 balloons in 2025 alone, the vast majority intended to ferry cigarettes across the border. Each balloon can carry several kilograms of tobacco, exploiting wind patterns to drift into EU territory before descending or bursting, where smugglers retrieve the cargo.
The optics of the situation have not been lost on regional officials. Belarus, under President Alexander Lukashenko, has long been described as Russia’s closest ally and has played a central role in Moscow’s military posture against NATO’s eastern flank. Russian forces have deployed advanced weapons systems on Belarusian soil, including Iskander ballistic missiles and the Oreshnik intermediate-range hypersonic missile—capabilities NATO views as a direct and serious security threat.
Belarus also served as a staging ground and logistics hub for Russian troops during the early phases of the invasion of Ukraine, with attacks launched from its territory against northern Ukrainian regions. Since then, Minsk and Moscow have deepened their security integration, signing broad agreements that further bind Belarus to Russia’s strategic objectives.
Against that backdrop, the notion that NATO is now being “threatened” by balloons carrying cigarettes has taken on a symbolic dimension. Critics in Poland and Lithuania argue that the incidents highlight the breadth of so-called hybrid tactics—actions that fall below the threshold of open warfare but nevertheless erode security, impose costs, and sow uncertainty.
Speaking in Brussels last week, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski accused Belarus of “waging a hybrid war” against his country. He said the balloon incursions illustrated the “nature of the regime” in Minsk, accusing Lukashenko of blending foreign policy with criminal activity in ways designed to destabilise neighbours while maintaining plausible deniability.
Belarus has repeatedly rejected such accusations, insisting it does not seek conflict with its neighbours and dismissing claims of state-directed hybrid warfare. Minsk argues that cigarette smuggling is a criminal phenomenon driven by economic disparities, not a geopolitical strategy.
The concept of hybrid warfare has become central to how NATO and EU states interpret ambiguous threats along their borders. At its core, hybrid warfare refers to the use of a mixture of military, cyber, economic, informational, and psychological tools to destabilise or pressure an adversary while avoiding clear attribution or triggering a conventional military response.
In this framework, even non-lethal activities—such as orchestrated migration flows, cyberattacks on civilian infrastructure, or persistent airspace violations by drones or balloons—can be viewed as components of a broader campaign.
Lithuanian officials argue that the balloon flights fit this pattern. While the cigarette-laden payloads themselves pose little immediate danger, the repeated incursions force authorities to react as though each incident could be something more sinister. Airports are closed, air policing units placed on alert, and civil-military coordination tested in real time.
Christina Harward, a Russia expert at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, has taken a particularly stark view. She has described the balloon flights, alongside other Russian-linked provocations, as “phase zero” of a potential conflict with NATO—a preparatory stage designed to create confusion, probe responses, and divide opinion within the alliance.
“The NATO states are having to sit down and figure out: Was this an attack?” Harward said. “Was it Russia? Was it truly cigarettes from smugglers?” The ambiguity itself, she argues, is part of the strategy.
One of the most pressing concerns for Baltic officials is the possibility that the balloons could one day carry something far more dangerous than tobacco. Laurynas Jonavicius, an adviser to the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry and a lecturer at Vilnius University, has warned that there is no guarantee the payloads will remain benign.
“Who can guarantee that one day, instead of cigarettes, there will be no bombs, explosives, or anything else?” he asked. “So it’s really a security threat. It may be a criminal activity, but knowing the history of what the Belarusian regime does to Lithuania, it’s quite obvious that it’s also a test.”
Lithuania’s border commander, Rustamas Liubajevas, echoed those concerns, saying it was “only a question of time” before balloons might be used to smuggle weapons, narcotics, or other dangerous materials. He cited “clear information” from Lithuania’s intelligence community describing the incidents as a “kinetic hybrid operation” that threatens not just Lithuania but the wider European Union.
According to Liubajevas, some balloons have been detected at altitudes of up to 10 kilometres and can reach speeds of 200 kilometres per hour depending on wind conditions. At such heights, they are often beyond the effective reach of standard air defence systems, complicating interception efforts.
The idea of weaponised balloons is not without precedent. During World War II, Japan launched thousands of hydrogen-filled balloons carrying incendiary and explosive devices toward North America. Designed to ride high-altitude jet streams, the so-called Fu-Go balloons were intended to ignite forest fires in the United States and Canada, diverting resources from the Pacific theatre.
While the campaign ultimately had limited strategic impact, it demonstrated how simple, low-cost technologies could be used to project force across vast distances. For Baltic officials, that history serves as a cautionary tale about underestimating seemingly crude methods.
Beyond the physical risks, the balloon incursions impose a subtler cost by forcing NATO members to activate procedures and reveal how they respond to ambiguous threats. Each incident requires coordination between civilian aviation authorities, border guards, military radar operators, and air policing units.
Poland’s Armed Forces Operational Command has suggested that the balloons may be intended, at least in part, to reconnoitre and test Polish air defences and response times. By observing how quickly airspace is closed, which sensors detect the objects, and how authorities communicate internally and publicly, adversaries could gain valuable intelligence.
This concern has been amplified by a series of drone and aircraft incidents along NATO’s eastern flank over the past year. Several Russian drones were reported to have crossed into Polish and Romanian airspace last fall, while a Russian MiG-31 briefly entered Estonian airspace, prompting sharp protests and renewed accusations that Moscow was deliberately testing NATO’s defences.
Similar drone sightings have been reported across other NATO countries, including Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, though the origins of many of those drones remain unclear. Each episode adds to a sense of cumulative pressure and uncertainty.
“Every time a Russian drone or plane violates our airspace, there is a risk of escalation, unintended or not. Russia is gambling with war,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said during a recent visit to Kyiv, following weeks of such incidents.
Faced with the practical challenge of intercepting balloons that are too high for conventional air defences and too slow or small to justify expensive missile interceptors, Lithuanian authorities have explored unconventional solutions. At one point, the government reportedly offered a €1 million reward to any company that could develop a viable method to intercept or neutralise the balloons without endangering civilians or disrupting air traffic.
The issue has also fed into broader debates about border security. Lithuania has been considering the option of mining parts of its border with Belarus and Russia, a controversial proposal driven in part by concerns about smuggling and hybrid threats.
For now, NATO is watching closely. Alliance chief Mark Rutte has been in talks with Lithuanian officials, and NATO said in a statement on January 30 that it is “monitoring the situation closely” and “stands in full solidarity with its ally.”
While packs of cigarettes dangling beneath balloons may seem an unlikely symbol of geopolitical tension, for NATO’s eastern members they encapsulate the dilemmas of modern security. The challenge lies not only in stopping smuggling or keeping airports open, but in deciding how to respond to actions that fall into the grey zone between crime and conflict.
As long as the balloons carry only tobacco, the immediate risks may remain limited. But for officials in Vilnius and Warsaw, the real danger lies in what comes next—and in how many such tests an already strained security environment can absorb before a miscalculation triggers something far more serious.
