On Sunday morning, people in northern and central Lithuania were told to take shelter for an hour after an unidentified flying object. Two Italian Eurofighters, under NATO command, scrambled from Šiauliai. Cloud stopped them seeing the target. They did not fire. Kaunas airport was closed for a time.

President Gitanas Nauseda wrote that what appeared to be a drone exploded in the north and put civilians at risk. Defence minister Robertas Kaunas said the object had come from the direction of Poland and asked for a joint inquiry. Warsaw said Polish radar had not confirmed a border crossing.

The Lithuanian army examined debris near Juodžionys, in Pasvalys district, after the contact vanished, possibly after an explosion. Some debris hit a moving civilian car. Nobody was hurt, the crisis centre said. Latvia briefly issued a yellow air warning on the border.

Ukraine's foreign ministry regretted the incident and said Russian electronic warfare can divert Ukrainian drones from targets in Russia. That is a possible explanation, not an identification. Origin, route and whether the object carried explosives remain open.

ANSA and DW draw the same limits: Italian jets, shelters, a car hit, a conditional apology from Kyiv. A NATO scramble is not an attribution. An apology is not a lab result.

Lithuania sits on the eastern flank. On Sunday a radar shadow emptied streets for an hour. Until debris and Poland, it remains an object, a damaged car and zero injuries.

Image: Cpl Neil Bryden RAF, Typhoon over Lithuania, OGL v1.0, Wikimedia Commons; an archive RAF flight, not the Italian scramble of 18 October.

Sources consulted: Alarm in Lithuania over a possible drone, public told to go to shelters - ANSA; Ukraine apologizes after a suspected drone crashes in Lithuania, damaging a moving car - DW.