Officers of Poland’s Warmian-Masurian Border Guard unit received information from the Podlaskie and Nadbużański units about balloons approaching the region. They began searching for the objects. In one case, they worked with officers from the district police headquarters in Olecko.
Packages of cigarettes were found in the districts of Olecko, Ełk, Giżycko and Kętrzyn. In total, officers seized nearly 660,000 cigarettes bearing Belarusian excise stamps. Their estimated value is 680,000 zlotys.
Four Lithuanian citizens and one Belarusian citizen were detained after coming to collect the tobacco products. The cigarettes had been smuggled from Belarus into Poland using meteorological balloons.
