Balloon Carrying Drone Repeater Enters Ukraine From Belarus

A balloon-borne drone repeater violated Ukrainian airspace after entering from Belarus.

This was reported by State Border Guard Service spokesman Andriy Demchenko on the “United News” telethon.

He said the agency does not rule out further provocations by Belarus. At the same time, Ukrainian intelligence continues to monitor the situation on its territory.

The use of balloons is a typical tool of Minsk’s hybrid pressure on neighboring states. Over the past year, such objects have been regularly recorded in the airspace of the Baltic states and Poland.

In 2025, Polish border guards recorded about 200 such incidents.

In Lithuania, the issue has also become systemic. By the end of 2025, the number of balloons from Belarus reached 623, prompting the government to declare a state of emergency.

Individual cases posed a threat to civil aviation — weather balloons flew over key airports, forcing temporary closures and flight delays.

Although such balloons are usually used for smuggling, the Polish military also considers them a tool for reconnaissance and for testing air defense responses.

Read more in our special article “The Lithuanian Weather Balloon Crisis: Lessons Learned.”

At the same time, reports indicate the expansion of Russian drone control infrastructure on the territory of Belarus.

In late March, it was reported that Russian forces were deploying new long-range drone control stations both in temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and in Belarus.

The first reports of the use of Belarusian territory to control Shahed drones appeared in late January, but without specific details.

Later, in February, the international intelligence community InformNapalm, together with the analytical cyber center Fenix, gained access to monitoring systems used by Russian drone operators by hacking their accounts.