Lithuanian Armed Forces have denied the Belarusian security service’s report that a drone attack was launched on Minsk from Lithuania.
“The State Security Committee, in cooperation with colleagues from other law enforcement agencies, has recently taken security measures to prevent attacks by unmanned combat aerial vehicles on targets in Minsk and its suburbs from the territory of Lithuania,” said the head of the Belarusian KGB, Ivan Tertel.
Major Gintautas Ciunis, a representative of the Strategic Communications Department of the Lithuanian Armed Forces, denied such reports.
“I can give 100 percent that this is disinformation. It’s nonsense that Lithuania would carry out a drone strike on Belarus, I cannot find any other word for it,” he told LRT.lt.
He said that such statements by Belarus “only bring a smile to my face”.
Živilė Didžgalvienė, the spokesperson for the Lithuanian Armed Forces commander, also denied the information spread by the Minsk regime.
“Hostile information activities are characterised by the dissemination of disinformation and false accusations. The Lithuanian Armed Forces have not taken and do not take any hostile actions against other countries,” she said.
Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of the Lithuanian National Crisis Management Centre (NKVC), notes that claims coming from Belarusian services about groups that allegedly target Belarus from the territories of Lithuania and Poland have circulated before.
“We have been hearing such narratives for a long time now, and they have become especially active in the Baltic states during NATO defence exercises, and Lukashenko was saying similar things in early March.
“Such statements by the Belarusian KGB should be seen as a continuous hostile provocation and information attack against Lithuania, which has nothing to do with reality. It can also be seen that they are aimed at the domestic audience, given that a ‘people’s assembly’ is taking place at the moment,” Vitkauskas said in a statement.
Tertel spoke at the Belarusian People’s Assembly in Minsk on Thursday.
The NKVC has also reminded that Lithuanian citizens travelling to Belarus face increasing harassment and interrogation by the country’s security services. They are therefore advised against travelling to Belarus.
Via LRT
