Amid the recent spate of incursions into NATO and EU airspace by nefarious actors, officials in Lithuania’s capital of Vilnius on Saturday found that the 25 or so balloons that grounded flights at the city’s international airport were launched by maybe not that nefarious of actors as their payloads were determined to be thousands upon thousands of packs of cheap, shitty Belarusian cigarettes bound for dealers seeking to sell them untaxed and unstamped to sketchy vendors, the AP reports.
While the intent was obviously well short of Kremlinist disruption the effect was the same as no fewer than 30 flights in and out of Vilnius were canceled or diverted after two of the balloons drifted into the airport’s restricted airspace. Cops recovered 11 balloons and their cargo of roughly 18,000 packs of cigarettes. It’s not clear if they’ll be destroyed or distributed to needy smokers.