NATO stands "vigilant, committed, and ready," Lithuania's foreign minister said Tuesday, after an allied fighter jet destroyed a drone that crossed into the country's airspace from Belarus — the latest in a string of aerial incursions testing the alliance's eastern border with Russia.
Kestutis Budrys credited the interception to the strength of collective defence, thanking the allies whose air presence, he said, protects Baltic skies and reinforces regional security.
But the message lands beyond Vilnius: as Russia's war on Ukraine grinds on, the alliance's eastern members are increasingly treating airspace violations — deliberate or not — as tests of NATO's resolve, and Tuesday's response was framed as proof the system works.
President Gitanas Nauseda confirmed the incident on social media, saying the drone had been destroyed.
"A drone that just entered Lithuanian airspace was destroyed by NATO fighter jets," Gitanas Nauseda wrote in a post on X.
