Lithuania has declared a state of emergency over smuggler balloons from Belarus that have disrupted aviation.

Vilnius airport has been closed because of the balloons, which Lithuania says have been sent by smugglers transporting cigarettes in recent weeks.

It also says they constitutes a “hybrid attack” by Belarus, which is a close ally of Russia.

Lithuania is a NATO member and ally to Ukraine during its fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

On Tuesday Lithuania’s interior minister Vladislav Kondratovic told a government meeting: “The state of emergency is announced not only due to civil aviation disruptions but also due to interests of national security.”

Mr Kondratovic added that the Lithuanian government had asked parliament to grant the military powers to act with police, border guards and security forces during the state of emergency.

Should parliament agree, the army will be given permission to limit access to territory, stop and search vehicles, perform checks on people, their documents and belongings, and to detain those resisting or suspected of crimes.

Lithuania’s defence minister Robert Kaunas said the military would be permitted to use force for these functions.

Belarus has denied responsibility and accused Lithuania of provocations.

This includes sending a drone to drop “extremist material”, which Lithuania denies.

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The emergency measures in Lithuania will last until the government calls them off.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on 1 December the situation at the border was worsening.

She described the balloon incursions a “hybrid attack” by Belarus, and branded it “completely unacceptable”.

With more than a thousand troops being killed or wounded every day, there’s no sign that Donald Trump’s push to end Russia’s war in Ukraine is reducing the battles on the ground.

Quite the opposite.

Ukraine‘s military chief says Vladimir Putin is instead using the US president‘s focus on peace negotiations as “cover” while Russian soldiers attempt to seize more land.

That means much greater pressure on the Ukrainian frontline, even as Russian and American, or American and Ukrainian, or Ukrainian and European, leaders shake hands and smile for cameras before retreating behind closed doors in Moscow, Alaska, and London.

Putin’s not counting on peace

The lack of any indicators that the Kremlin is looking to slow its military machine down also makes the risk of war spreading beyond Ukraine’s borders increasingly likely.

It takes a huge amount of effort, time, and money to put a country on a war footing as Putin has done, partially mobilising his population, allocating huge portions of government spending to the military and realigning Russia’s vast industrial base to produce weapons and ammunition.

But when the fighting stops, it requires almost as much focus and energy to switch a society back to a peace time rhythm.

Deliberately choosing not to dial defence down once the battles cease means a nation will continue to grow its armed forces and weapons stockpiles – a sure sign that it has no intention of being peaceful and is merely having a pause before going on the attack again.

The absence of any preparations by Moscow to slow the tempo of its military operations in Ukraine – where it has more than 710,000 troops deployed along a 780-mile frontline – is perhaps an indicator that Putin is anticipating more not less war.

How could the war end?

What happens next in Europe will depend on the content of any peace deal on Ukraine.

An all-out Russian defeat is all but impossible to conceive without a significant change of heart by the Trump White House and a massive increase in weapons and support.

The next best result for Ukraine would be a settlement that seeks to strike a fair balance between the warring sides and their conflicting objectives.

This could be done by pausing the fighting along the current line of contact before substantive peace talks then take place, with Ukraine’s sovereignty supported by solid security guarantees from Europe and the US.

But such a move would require Europe’s NATO allies, led by the UK, France and Germany, genuinely to switch their respective militaries and populations back to a wartime footing, with a credible readiness to go to war should Moscow attempt to test their support of Ukraine.

Will Starmer level with the public?

That does not just mean increased spending on defence at a much faster rate – in the UK at least – than is currently planned. It is also about the mindset of a country and its willingness to take some pain.

France is already openly saying that parents may have to lose their children in a war with Russia, while Germany is requiring all 18-year-old men to undergo medical checks for possible national service.

No such tough but frank conversation is being attempted by Sir Keir Starmer with the British public.

The furthest his military chief has gone is to say “warfighting readiness” is his top priority.

But that is meaningless jargon for most of the public. Being ready for war is about so much more than what the professional armed forces can do.

Armies fight battles. Countries fight wars.

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Worst case scenario?

The other alternative when it comes to Ukraine is a scenario that sees a sidelined Europe unable to influence the outcome of the negotiations and Kyiv forced to agree to terms that favour Moscow.

This would include the surrender of land in the Donbas that is still under Ukrainian control.

Such a deal – even if tolerated by Ukraine, which is unimaginable without serious unrest – would likely only mean a temporary halt in hostilities until Putin or whoever succeeds him decides to try again to take the rest of Ukraine, or maybe even test NATO’s borders by moving against the Baltic States.

With Trump’s new national security strategy making clear the US would only intervene to defend Europe if such a move is in America’s interests, it is no longer certain that the guarantees contained in NATO’s founding Article 5 principle – that an attack on one member state is an attack on all – can be relied upon.

To have a sense of how a war with Russia might play out without the US on NATO’s side, Sky News and Tortoise ran a wargame that simulates a Russian attack on the UK.

In the scenario, Washington does not come to Britain’s defences, which leaves the British side with very few options to respond short of a nuclear strike.

👉Search for The Wargame on your podcast app👈

A powerful earthquake struck off northern Japan, injuring 33 people and unleashing a tsunami.

The 7.5-magnitude quake struck at about 11.15pm local time, around 80 kilometers off the coast of Aomori prefecture.

Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency said 33 people were injured, including one seriously, with most hurt by falling objects.

A tsunami of 70cm was measured just south of Aomori, in Kuji port, Iwate prefecture, while levels of up to 50cm struck elsewhere in the region, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

“I’ve never experienced such a big shaking,” said Nobuo Yamada, who owns a convenience store in Hachinohe, Aomori, in an interview with public broadcaster NHK.

Earlier on, the meteorological agency issued an alert for potential tsunami surges of up to 3m/10ft, with 90,000 residents ordered to evacuate.

Residents were urged by chief cabinet secretary Minoru Kihara to go to higher ground or seek shelter until advisories were lifted.

He said about 800 homes were without electricity, and that the Shinkansen bullet trains and some local lines were suspended in parts of the region.

Some 480 residents took shelter at the Hachinohe Air Base, defence minister Shinjiro Koizumi said, with 18 defence helicopters mobilised for damage assessments.

While Satoshi Kato, vice principal of a public high school in the same town, encountered traffic jams and car accidents en-route to the school as panicked people tried to flee.

Japan has recent experience of the perils of earthquakes – one in 2011 unleashed a tsunami that killed some 20,000 people and triggered a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

Today’s quake caused about 450 litres of water to spill from a spent fuel cooling area at the Rokkasho fuel reprocessing plant in Aomori, the Nuclear Regulation Authority said.

But water levels remained within the normal range and there was no safety concern, the authority added.

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The Japanese government has now lifted all remaining tsunami advisories, but warned people to remain alert for another week in case of aftershocks.

Satoshi Harada, from the meteorological agency’s earthquake and volcano division, cautioned that the 2011 quake could repeat itself.

“You need to prepare, assuming that a disaster like that could happen again,” he said.