Now Europe’s Airports Are Being Threatened By Cigarette-Smuggling Balloons

Vilnius Airport in Lithuania, a Baltic EU member country close to Ukraine and Russia, was shut down on Saturday due to an incursion of small flying objects. But this time it wasn’t Vladimir Putin sending swarms of drones to disrupt European airspace. It was… balloons. Yes, balloons. Balloons that were smuggling cigarettes. I did not know that balloons could smuggle cigarettes and neither did you, but now we do.

Indeed, the BBC says that 14 weather balloons invaded Lithuania from neighboring Belarus, intent on making a quick buck off of cheap nicotine. Lithuanian authorities have recovered 11 of the illegal alien balloons, and 18,000 illicit packs with them. Believe it or not, this isn’t even that weird! It’s just that this time, a few of them flew into the airport’s space, forcing it to shut down for a little while. In other words, the criminal balloons accidentally committed a more serious crime on the way to committing their normal crime.

If you’ve ever been to Europe, you know they love to smoke over there. Obviously, this isn’t great for public health, which is why most European countries level steep taxes on packs. That’s an opportunity for smugglers to get cigarettes, made on the cheap in Belarus, into smokers’ hands sans tax. This keeps the overall smoking rate higher and, for a small country like Lithuania, starves the state of important revenue.

In fact, Belarusian tobacco fiends have been using Lithuania as a staging area for the rest of the EU for decades. One study found that nearly 30% of all cigarette packs in the Baltic country were illegal, and that 90% of those came from Belarus (87% from one specific factory). And how are the smugglers doing their smuggling? You guessed it: by balloon. In 2024, we know that fully 966 criminal balloons flew from Belarus to Lithuania. And, of course, that’s not counting however many balloons Lithuanian officials didn’t find. 

Now, you may be thinking to yourself that, if you were a Belarusian criminal mastermind, you would bring your enterprise into the 21^st century and use drones. Drones are getting pretty cheap, after all! But you know what’s cheaper than drones? Balloons. And balloons can carry more weight than drones, too. So don’t expect the balloons to stop flying anytime soon. Hopefully, they’ll just steer clear of the airports next time.