In late 2023 and into 2024, European Union states on the eastern frontier – Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia – faced an unprecedented series of border provocations originating from Belarus. These began with a migration crisis engineered by Minsk in 2021, when thousands of Middle Eastern migrants were funneled to EU borders as a form of pressure. While that crisis has ebbed and flowed, it never fully disappeared and became a constant tool for Belarus to exert pressure on its Western neighbors. Now, a new and even more unsettling chapter has emerged: swarms of contraband-carrying drones and balloons launched from Belarus have opened another front in this hybrid confrontation, disrupting border security and civil aviation, and forcing the EU to grapple with a novel kind of threat. What seems at first glance to be a localized border spat is, in fact, indicative of a broader strategy – the export of chaos by authoritarian regimes.
From migrants to balloons: Belarus’ hybrid tactics against Lithuania
Belarus has steadily expanded its repertoire of tactics to unsettle neighboring EU states. After weaponizing migrants in 2021–2022 to strain Poland’s and the Baltic states’ borders, Minsk turned to smuggling operations as a new pressure point. Over the past two years, cigarette smuggling in particular has spiked along Belarus’s borders with Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland. Authorities initially saw smugglers using drones to drop off illicit cigarettes; Lithuanian border guards intercepted one such drone with a cigarette payload in late 2024. By 2025, however, the smuggling methods had evolved dramatically. Weather balloons – large helium balloons capable of carrying contraband – began appearing by the hundreds in the skies over Lithuania. These balloons fly at high altitudes (~13 km) and have been so numerous that they repeatedly forced Vilnius Airport to halt flights, affecting around 140 flights and 20,000 passengers in October alone. Lithuanian officials have decried the incursions as a deliberate “hybrid attack” from Belarus, noting that such an operation points to a well-organized effort rather than random criminal smuggling. Each balloon can carry about 40–50 kg of cigarettes – roughly 1,500 packs – worth thousands of euros in the EU market. The sheer scale and ingenuity of this campaign have laid bare a troubling reality: Belarus is leveraging illicit trade not just for profit, but as a geopolitical tool to destabilize and distract its EU neighbors.
Lithuania’s hardline response and how it backfired
Facing these escalating provocations, Lithuania took the unprecedented step of closing its last two operational border checkpoints with Belarus on October 29, 2025. Vilnius framed the closure as a necessary move to protect public safety and national security amid the balloon incursions that had even put civil aviation at risk. The shutdown was intended to last at least a month and, if needed, “as long as necessary” according to Prime Minister of Lithuania. This hardline reaction, however, triggered a cascade of unintended consequences. Crucially, it stranded over a thousand Lithuanian trucks and their drivers on the Belarusian side of the border, as Minsk retaliated by refusing to let them exit through any other country. Belarus corralled these trucks into special parking lots and promptly imposed a steep “parking fee” of €120 per day on each vehicle. In effect, the trucks and millions of euros worth of cargo became hostages in a brinksmanship game. Minsk gleefully denounced Lithuania’s border closure as a “mad scam” and part of a Western hybrid war against Belarus. He even threatened to confiscate the ~1100 stranded trucks if Lithuania did not reopen the border and pay the accumulated fees for their “protection”.
By mid-November, the stalemate had become economically and politically untenable. Lithuanian logistics companies were incurring heavy losses, supply chains were disrupted, and domestic criticism was mounting. Reluctantly, Vilnius announced it would reopen the Medininkai and Šalčininkai crossings on November 20, ten days earlier than initially planned. Belarus, for its part, claimed it was “ready to resume” cross-border traffic, yet even after the reopening, it continued to drag its feet. Minsk demanded high-level talks with Lithuanian officials before releasing the trucks and insisted that the hefty parking fees be settled first. This maneuver underscored how Minsk was using the episode for political leverage; as one Lithuanian hauler representative put it, the tactic felt like outright extortion. Lithuanian officials, meanwhile, maintained that they would not compensate the trucking firms for their losses, pointedly noting that doing business with an unpredictable regime next door comes with risks that the private sector must account for. While this stance absolved the government of financial responsibility, it also highlighted a painful reality: the fallout from security decisions was landing on ordinary businesses and citizens.
Discord and solidarity: Poland’s parallel border moves
The border confrontation with Belarus has not played out in a vacuum – neighboring Poland has been drawn into the fray as well. Warsaw, which has had its own disputes with Lukashenko’s regime, had previously shut several border crossings in 2023 due to security incidents (including the jailing of Polish activists in Belarus and the presence of Russia’s Wagner mercenaries next door). By September 2025, only two Polish-Belarusian road crossings (at Kuźnica and Bobrowniki) remained closed, limiting traffic severely. In a surprising twist, as Lithuania sealed its border in late October, Poland was preparing to reopen its crossings. The Polish government initially delayed the reopening “out of solidarity” with Lithuania’s security concerns, but economic pressures and domestic lobbying by transport companies pushed for resumption. On November 17, Poland went ahead and reopened the Kuźnica and Bobrowniki checkpoints after a two-month closure. Polish officials insisted this decision was driven by practical needs – easing the flow of goods and commuters – and was “not part of any political deal” regarding Belarus. Nonetheless, according to several observers, the timing coincided with reported behind-the-scenes diplomacy: Belarus had recently freed dozens of political prisoners in a U.S.-mediated arrangement, and some speculated that Polish citizens or minority activists imprisoned in Belarus may have been part of these talks. The result was an odd asymmetry – Lithuania and Poland, two EU allies, briefly took divergent approaches to the same provocations. This lack of perfectly synchronized strategy highlights how Belarus’s antics can strain even close neighbors’ unity. Ultimately, both countries’ crossings are now open, but the episode exposed how complex and sometimes conflicting priorities – from humanitarian considerations to economic interests – can complicate a coordinated response to Minsk’s pressure tactics.
The Economic Lure of Smuggling
At the heart of Belarus’s smuggling offensive is a straightforward economic calculus. The price of cigarettes in EU countries is several times higher than in Belarus, largely due to hefty Western taxes and Belarus’s lower production costs. A pack of Belarusian-made cigarettes might cost the equivalent of €1, while in nearby EU markets it can fetch €3–4. This 3-4x price gap creates irresistible profit margins for contrabandists. Each balloon or drone shipment of cigarettes that successfully evades border controls can net tens of thousands of euros in profit. Those gains are indirectly beneficial to Minsk as well: Belarus’s state-linked factories produce the cigarettes, and even if the goods are officially destined for export, a significant portion finds its way into the black market. Taxes and fees on tobacco and alcohol sales remain important for Belarus’s budget, meaning the regime has little incentive to crack down on smuggling networks that ultimately put money in its coffers. On the contrary, high-level complicity is strongly suspected. Lithuanian officials and independent experts have argued that launching hundreds of large balloons is unlikely without at least tacit tolerance from Belarusian security services. In other words, what might appear as “ordinary” smuggling is deeply entangled with state policy. The economic disparities provide the fuel, but it’s the state’s strategic choice to weaponize those disparities that turns cigarette smuggling into a hybrid threat.
It’s also worth noting that this gray economy is a byproduct of the sanctions and isolation Belarus has faced since 2020. As legitimate trade with the West shrank (especially after Minsk’s complicity in Russia’s war against Ukraine), Belarus leaned more on illicit or semi-legal schemes to earn hard currency. Commodities ranging from oil products to household goods have been part of these re-export or smuggling schemes. The cigarette is thus part of a larger pattern wherein Belarus and its ally Russia exploit loopholes and black markets to soften the blow of sanctions. In doing so, they also create headaches for the EU – flooding neighboring markets with untaxed goods, fostering corruption, and now, apparently, threatening public safety with aerial smuggling. The economic incentive to continue is strong: as long as a pack of cigarettes can be made in Minsk for a fraction of the price it commands in Warsaw or Vilnius, enterprising smugglers (and any officials protecting them) will try ever more creative means to shuttle their wares across.
Exporting Chaos: The New Geopolitical Weapon
The Belarus border saga is more than a local quarrel – it exemplifies a new form of leverage that authoritarian regimes are increasingly deploying. Lacking the positive enticements or soft power to influence the West, regimes like those in Minsk and Moscow have learned that they can export instability as a commodity. In effect, they manufacture crises – whether by sending waves of migrants, deploying mercenaries in foreign conflicts, launching cyber-attacks, or floating contraband into EU airspace – and then leverage those crises to extract concessions or simply to divert the West’s attention and resources. This strategy has been described by some analysts as the “export of chaos,” and it is becoming a hallmark of Moscow’s and Minsk’s playbooks. Rather than selling something tangible, these regimes sell the absence of trouble: create a problem, then offer to dial it down if the other side behaves in a desired way (or pays a price). It’s a geopolitical protection racket that mirrors the bandit practices of 1990s post-Soviet mafias – not coincidentally, the milieu from which many in the current Kremlin elite emerged.
For much of modern history, the influence of Eastern autocracies was built on exporting conventional resources and ideas. Imperial Russia and later the Soviet Union traded commodities like timber and furs with Europe; in the 20th century, the Soviet bloc’s oil and gas became critical exports that gave Moscow leverage over fuel-hungry European economies. The USSR also aggressively exported ideology – Marxism-Leninism – supporting communist movements worldwide as a means to expand its geopolitical reach. Belarus, as a smaller state, largely piggybacked on these trends, benefiting from Soviet industrial might and later acting as a junior partner to Russia’s energy exports and military posture. However, by the late 20th century, the allure of communist ideology faded, and in the 21st century, globalization and energy diversification began chipping away at the East’s traditional leverage. Europe started weaning itself off over-reliance on Russian gas, and authoritarian regimes found fewer willing takers for their grand visions of Eurasian unity or illiberal democracy.
In this context, instability itself has become the export. The Kremlin has honed this approach in recent years across multiple regions. In conflict zones of the Middle East and Africa, Russia provides just enough support – often via mercenaries like the Wagner Group – to perpetuate conflicts or prop up dictators, thereby ensuring influence and sometimes access to resources, all while positioning itself as an indispensable mediator. The controlled chaos serves to prevent Western competitors from establishing stable footholds and forces them to reckon with Moscow’s agenda. In Africa and Syria, for example, Russian actors have been accused of fanning the flames of war or insurgency, then offering “counter-terrorism” assistance. Belarus, lacking Russia’s global reach, applies the concept more narrowly – chiefly against its immediate EU neighbors. By making life miserable at the border (through migrant surges or aerial smuggling campaigns), Minsk hopes to pressure Lithuania, Poland, and others into non-interference in the regime’s internal deals and to compel them to engage with Belarus on its terms (for instance, reopening trade channels or refraining from new sanctions). It’s a way of saying: “If you push me politically or isolate me, I can create chaos on your doorstep.”
A Challenge the West Struggles to Answer
The tactic of exporting chaos puts Western democracies in a bind. Traditional tools like economic sanctions or diplomatic isolation can punish bad behavior, but they don’t always stop a regime from causing disruptive trouble in retaliation. The EU and NATO countries have been forced into reactive mode, strengthening border fences, mobilizing troops or police to frontier regions, and constantly negotiating among themselves how to handle the provocations. The recent Belarus border conflict – spanning from the 2021 migrant crisis to the 2025 balloon saga – shows how difficult it is to achieve a unified and effective response. Lithuania’s border closure was bold but unsustainable without broader support; Poland’s brief solidarity was helpful, but ultimately each country had to mind its own interests as well. There is also an implicit moral dilemma: meeting chaos with counter-chaos is unappealing for rule-of-law democracies, yet ignoring provocations carries security risks and political costs at home.
So far, Western responses have been piecemeal. The EU has bolstered Frontex border agency deployments and funded physical barriers on the Belarus frontier. NATO has increased air patrols and incident monitoring. Diplomatically, European leaders condemn Minsk and Moscow’s hybrid tactics, but direct engagement is fraught – any concessions could encourage more blackmail, yet a total lack of dialogue might escalate matters further. The exporters of chaos count on this indecision. They bet that open societies, with their changing governments and emphasis on legal process, will find it hard to muster a quick or unanimous strategy to push back. Indeed, authoritarian regimes often thrive in the gray zones of conflict below the threshold of open war, where they can deny direct involvement and exploit our very adherence to rules and norms.
As 2025 draws to a close, one thing is clear: chaos has become a valuable geopolitical commodity. The Belarus-EU border incidents are a microcosm of this new reality. What began as a local nuisance – smuggled cigarettes and nuisance balloons – has exposed vulnerabilities in European security and unity. Tackling this will require Europe to think beyond reactive measures and develop a playbook for hybrid threats that mix crime, politics, and warfare. In the long run, reducing the profitability of chaos is key: that means closing smuggling loopholes, coordinating policies so that Belarus and Russia cannot play neighbors off against each other, and steadfastly refusing to be cowed by extortion attempts. It’s a tall order, and in the meantime, the export of chaos shows no sign of slowing. Like energy or ideology in earlier eras, instability is now being shipped westward – and the West will have to learn how to guard against a commodity it never wanted to import.
