At night, in Lublin, an object was heard. Not an explosion. Anna Kamola, a police spokeswoman, on TVN24: a loud, unknown noise passing by. Reports from near the Zemborzycki reservoir and from Łęczna. The Polish army is searching, south of the city, for an impact site. So far the airspace violation is not confirmed. The radar return, the army says, could also be a meteorological phenomenon. That is the night. The morning is another.

At 06.15 local time NATO fighters went up over Lithuania. Kaunas airport, closed. The alert, in the north and the centre: shelters, an hour. Then lifted. Reuters: two Italian Eurofighters, under NATO command. Bad weather, visual identification, no. A shoot-down, no. The national crisis centre: the object vanished from radar, possibly after an explosion, near the village of Juodžionys. Latvia briefly issued a yellow warning at the border.

Robertas Kaunas, the defence minister: the object entered, on a preliminary reading, from Poland. He asked his Polish counterpart for a joint inquiry. The Polish defence spokesman, Janusz Sejmej, told PAP that Poland’s radars do not confirm a crossing towards Lithuania. Contact remains. Two readings. One object. A Baltic corridor, still uncleared.

LRT: a person travelling from Biržai towards Pasvalys heard an explosion. Debris dented the car door. Injuries, none. Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius called the national security commission for Monday. He wants to see whether it is sabotage. President Gitanas Nausėda: Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is spilling onto NATO’s and the EU’s eastern flank. Kaunas found it “strange and unacceptable” that the alert did not go nationwide if the object had already been detected.

Vilmantas Vitkauskas, of the NKVC, on LRT radio: most likely a Ukrainian drone, which could have entered while Kyiv was striking in the St Petersburg area. That is a preliminary reading. It is not a court attribution. Ukraine’s foreign ministry regretted the incident and said Russian electronic jamming can divert drones off course. Origin, and whether it carried explosive, remain under inquiry. Anyone who closes them before the debris turns a noise into a sentence.

In September NATO aircraft brought down a drone over Lithuania that Vilnius said had come from Belarus, without it being clear whether it was Ukrainian or Russian. In the summer a Russian cruise missile fell in a Polish field. Those are precedents. They are not the night in Lublin. Until a confirmation, Poland is checking. Lithuania is counting a dented door. NATO scrambled. The rest is the inquiry.

Image: Zirzilia, Kaunas International Airport, 2010, public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The photograph is of the terminal, closed for an hour on Sunday, not the impact site.

Sources consulted: Poland investigates a possible airspace violation, air-raid alarm in Lithuania — NOS; Drone enters Lithuania from Poland, debris hits a car on rural road — LRT.