Ukraine apologises after its drone crashes in Lithuania

A Ukrainian drone crashed in Lithuania on Sunday, its debris damaging a moving car without injuring anyone, and Ukraine apologised, saying Russian electronic warfare jamming may have diverted the drone from its course.

Why it matters: The crash came in a morning of air alerts over Lithuania, with shelter warnings, NATO jets deployed and an airport briefly closed, another spillover of the air war onto NATO territory on the alliance's eastern flank.

Data as of Second correction, Sunday, October 18, 2026, 14:38 ET: successive reads of the Deutsche Welle report, which DW has updated through the day, have differed on the crash location, on whether the drone carried explosives and on how the morning air alert connects to the crash. This version keeps only what is consistent across those reads and corroborated by the Arab News report of the Lithuanian army and crisis centre statements, and drops the single-read specifics carried in earlier versions, including a named crash village and district, a named Ukrainian spokesman and an explosives finding. The electronic warfare explanation is Kyiv's account, reported by DW.

A suspected Ukrainian drone crashed in Lithuania on Sunday and its debris damaged a moving civilian car, injuring no one, the head of Lithuania’s national crisis management centre, Vilmantas Vitkauskas, said. Ukraine apologised for the incident, and Kyiv said Russian electronic warfare jamming may have diverted the drone, which had been targeting Russia; the drone’s origin and whether it carried explosives remained under investigation, Deutsche Welle reported.

The crash came amid a wider air alert: Lithuania told residents in central and northern regions to go to shelters on Sunday morning after detecting an unrecognized flying object, NATO air policing jets were deployed, two Italian Eurofighters under NATO command according to DW, and Kaunas airport was closed for about an hour, while Latvia issued a yellow warning in regions bordering Lithuania. Defence Minister Robertas Kaunas said the object probably entered from neighbouring Poland and proposed a joint investigation with Warsaw, and President Gitanas Nauseda described the incident as another example of the war spilling onto NATO’s eastern flank.

Ukraine apologises after its drone crashes in Lithuania

Sources