According to Belarusian authorities, for the first time, an unidentified drone was spotted and shot down over the capital Monday night, July 29.
“As a result of electronic warfare, at 2:33 a.m. the UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] fell near building 72 on Matusyevicha Street in the city of Minsk. No casualties were reported,” the Belarusian Ministry of Defense stated.
Following the incident, Minsk announced it was “taking measures to strengthen control over the airspace.”
“The Head of State [ed. Lukashenko] is keeping the situation under personal control.”
Belarus has not officially joined the war against Ukraine but has provided Russia with its territory for troop deployment, missile strikes, and logistics.
Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko’s regime supports the Kremlin while avoiding direct involvement of Belarusian armed forces in combat operations. Kyiv officially considers Belarus a co-aggressor in the war.
As of the time of publication, neither Ukraine nor Russia had officially claimed the drone.
This isn’t the first time that a, presumably foreign, drone has entered Belarus.
Kyiv Post sources in Ukraine’s Military Intelligence reported that a Mi-24 helicopter belonging to Belarus’ air defense forces attacked and destroyed a Russian Gerbera-type strike UAV heading toward Ukraine on July 12
According to a representative from Ukraine’s military intelligence, HUR, at least three Russian drones were in Belarusian airspace at the time. During a routine airspace monitoring operation, a Belarusian air defense helicopter reported detecting and neutralizing the drone. Intelligence sources say the wreckage of the downed UAV fell in Belarus’ Gomel region.
Two days earlier, on July 10, Lithuania had scrambled fighter jets to intercept an unidentified drone that entered its airspace from Belarus. Due to the potential threat, the country’s leadership temporarily moved to shelters. The UAV crashed about one kilometer from the Belarusian border, near the closed Shumsk border checkpoint.
Later, Lithuanian Minister of National Defense Dovilė Šakalienė confirmed that the drone was a Russian Gerbera – a decoy UAV with no warhead, designed to distract air defense systems. How it managed to enter Lithuanian territory after crossing through Ukraine and Belarus remains under investigation.