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Lithuanian drone detained in Russia last week was used for cigarette smuggling

“It was the first time that a drone controlled by a foreign operator had been detained in the territory of the Kaliningrad region,” the spokeperson of the Russian Federal Security service says

© ITAR-TASS/Valery Matytsin

KALININGRAD, May 14./ITAR-TASS/. A Lithuanian self-made drone detained in Russia’s westernmost Kaliningrad region last week was used for smuggling cigarettes into Russia, Oleg Dzhurayev, the press service chief of the Kaliningrad border department of the Russian Federal Security service, told ITAR-TASS on Wednesday.

A Russian-Lithuanian criminal group used the self-made drone aircraft for illegally smuggling cigarettes across the Lithuanian border into Russia. Dzhurayev said huge boxes with cigarettes had been found inside the drone when the border guards detained the aircraft on Lithuania’s border with Russia. He did not rule out the drone could have been used for other purposes, including unlawful actions in Russia’s territory.

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