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The incident took place on Tuesday morning, is linked to the allied exercises in the Baltic Sea, the SNB was confirmed by the Ministry of National Defense and the army.
“Yesterday, around 9.45am, two Russian military planes allegedly violated Lithuanian airspace over the territorial waters of the Baltic Sea,” Army representative Major Gintautas Ciunis told BNS.
“It was probably two SU-24s,” he added.
Later, Lithuanian officials confirmed the fact of the airspace violation.
A representative of the Russian embassy was summoned to the Foreign Ministry and received a note of protest over the incident.
Lithuanian officials say the Russian planes flew one kilometer into Lithuanian airspace and stayed there for about a minute.
The Minister of National Defense, Arvydas Anušauskas, associates the actions of Russia with the international exercise BALTOPS organized by the Americans in the Baltic Sea.
“Since the BALTOPS exercises are taking place in that region, I imagine their interest in this area,” the minister told BNS.
According to him, it is common for Russia to increase its speed as Allied military activity in the Baltic Sea increases.
“However, this activity can be carried out in various ways,” said A. Anušauskas. “If it is a military activity to observe an exercise carried out by another country, there is nothing special, the planes are looking at planes, the ships are looking at ships.”
“But sometimes there is a situation with Russia where they use the exercises in our country for aggressive actions, such as simulating the attack of an allied ship, conducting aggressive flights and the like,” he added.
Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė stated that Lithuania would like to avoid violations of Russian airspace.
“I really want to avoid those cacti also for the security of the region, obviously those things do not contribute, but apparently that is the objective,” said the prime minister after the government meeting at BNS.
The BALTOPS exercise, which began in early June, will run through Friday. About 4 thousand people participate in them. soldiers, 40 ships and 60 planes from 18 countries.
