Ukraine apologizes to Lithuania after drone enters airspace, blames Russian electronic warfare

Lithuania declared a red air alert across its central and northern regions on Sunday morning, Oct. 18, and residents received phone messages telling them to go to shelters. Hours later, Ukraine's foreign ministry apologized.

"We regret the incident that occurred this morning in Lithuanian airspace, which may have resulted from Russian electronic warfare diverting drones during an operation against legitimate military targets in Russia," ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi wrote on X. "We apologise for any disruption, risks, and concern this may have caused."

Tykhyi said Kyiv is committed to sharing all relevant information with Lithuanian partners to establish the full circumstances. An earlier version of his post also mentioned Latvia. The ministry also said Russian aggression is the root cause of the security threats in the region.

What Lithuania is investigating

Lithuanian authorities are looking into a possible drone crash in the Pasvalys district. Local residents sent in about 50 reports, and debris was reportedly found in the village of Juodžionis.

The Lithuanian military has speculated that the object may have flown in from Poland. Its origin and route have not been determined.

Ukraine's account, that Russian jamming pushed its drones off course, is Kyiv's own explanation, and Lithuanian officials have not confirmed it. Kyiv's apology covers the incident itself, not a finished investigation.

The spoofing build-up around Kaliningrad

Lithuania has been warning about exactly this kind of interference. Darius Kuliesius, deputy head of Lithuania's communications regulator, told Reuters earlier this week that Russia has expanded its GPS-spoofing antennae in Kaliningrad from three in early 2025 to 36 now.

Kuliesius said the system can falsify signals up to 450 km from the exclave. A regulator map showed possible interference across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, most of Poland, and parts of Finland, Sweden and Belarus, as well as the Baltic Sea. The regulator estimated the range by analyzing disturbances in aviation ADS-B transmissions.

"The occasional interference began with the 2023 NATO summit in Vilnius," Kuliesius said. "Now they have built up the infrastructure and the interference has become systemic, permanent, unending Russian provocation against European security."

The effects reach past the military. Kuliesius said mobile networks near Kaliningrad have lost quality on some frequencies. Online bus schedules in Klaipeda, about 50 km from the border, stop working during spikes because they track buses by GPS. He said spoofing and jamming intensify during Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia.

Russia has frequently denied accusations of electronic interference. The Russian embassy in Vilnius did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Kuliesius's figures.

Not the first stray drone

Sunday's apology follows earlier incidents in Baltic airspace. In May, a NATO jet shot down a suspected Ukrainian drone over Estonia. Some coverage of Kyiv's statement this time carried the label "again," a sign that this is a pattern rather than a one-off.

The flights come as Ukraine presses its campaign against Russian energy sites. On Thursday, Oct. 15, Ukrainian drones hit a refinery in Russia's Ryazan region, about 300 kilometers southeast of Moscow, starting a fire, according to Russia's Defense Ministry and Ryazan Gov. Pavel Malkov. That came hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a brief truce Moscow had spurned was over. Strikes aimed at Russia's interior can run through electronic-warfare zones that Russia has been building out for more than a year.

For Ukraine's neighbors, the problem is practical. Every drone that drifts off course over a NATO country forces an alert, a scramble and a decision about whether to shoot. Lithuania's citizens got shelter warnings on their phones on a Sunday morning because of a flight that, by Kyiv's own account, may not have gone where its operators intended.

What comes next is an investigation. Lithuanian authorities have yet to establish where the drone entered, whether it came via Poland, and what brought it down. Kyiv has promised to hand over its flight data, and that data is the test of its electronic-warfare explanation.