Pedestrians are reflected in a window of a business center bearing a sign reading "Shelter" in Vilnius on May 20, 2026. A drone alert sent by Lithuania's defence ministry to residents of the capital city Vilnius briefly brought transport to a standstill and caused people to flee to underground shelters. Alerts of this kind have been increasingly common in recent months in the Baltic states as a result of intensified Ukrainian strikes against Russian targets in the Saint Petersburg region, close to Estonia and Finland. But Wednesday's (May 20, 2026) alarm was the first in an EU and NATO member country since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022 to trigger a hunker-down alert for the population -- including the president, prime minister and MPs. (Photo by Andrei SHAULIUHA / AFP via Getty Images)