Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius said Lithuania has developed evacuation plans for a variety of potential security scenarios as concerns mount over Russian threats and repeated drone incursions into Baltic airspace.

Lithuanians are feeling increasingly exposed to regional security risks, in particular because of incidents involving drones entering the country’s airspace, Sinkevičius said. “If they attack us, we will fight back.” "We will engage," Sinkevičius said, Newsnight, emphasising that the government was also planning for various contingencies.

Among those plans, the government included practical moves such as the orderly evacuation of elderly residents from cities and measures to avoid heavy traffic congestion, he said.

“We’re considering several scenarios; not all of them are being talked about very much publicly,” he said.

Lithuania, a NATO member, borders Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave. The country also is on NATO’s eastern flank, close to the war in Ukraine and Russia’s military presence in the area.

“The UK and other NATO countries had to think about how to adapt their defense policies to the security environment faced by countries nearer to Russia,” Sinkevičius said.

The comments followed the shooting down by NATO aircraft of a drone that entered Lithuanian airspace from the direction of Belarus in September. The Lithuanian authorities said the object was identified as a drone and that NATO aircraft responded to the intrusion.

The exact origin and purpose of the drone were initially under investigation. Later reports said Lithuanian authorities were looking into evidence about the aircraft, while President Gitanas Nausėda said it was a Russian-made Gerbera drone, probably intended for Ukraine and may have been diverted by Ukrainian electronic warfare. Those assessments should clearly separate the drone’s entry into Lithuania from Belarus.

This is not the first time this year that drones have caused disruption in Lithuania. In May, Vilnius declared an air alert after a suspected drone was detected near Lithuania’s eastern border. Air traffic was briefly disrupted as authorities hunted for the object.

Similar incidents have taken place elsewhere in the Baltic. A Romanian F-16 flying with NATO’s Baltic air-policing mission shot down a Ukrainian drone that entered Estonian airspace in May. Russian electronic warfare may have been involved in some of the drones going off their planned routes, Baltic officials and Ukrainian authorities have stated, though attribution has differed from incident to incident.

The UK has also reiterated its commitment to NATO’s collective defense. Defense Secretary Wes Streeting, who took up the post in July 2026, said NATO was still willing to protect allied airspace.

Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia joined NATO in 2004. NATO's founding document, the North Atlantic Treaty, states under Article 5 that an armed attack against one member is an attack against all. However, the provision does not specify a particular military response but leaves each ally to determine what action it considers necessary to help the attacked member.

Recent incidents in Lithuania have raised concerns that Russia's war in Ukraine could pose broader security risks to neighboring NATO countries. Instead, Lithuanian officials have been combining military readiness with civilian emergency planning.