Sometime in the week of 24-30 August 2026 - the exact date has not been publicly disclosed - funeral wreaths appeared outside the Vilnius offices of RSI Europe, a Lithuanian manufacturer of FPV drones and remote-detonation systems for Ukraine's armed forces. Next to the wreaths, unknown individuals left a photograph of the company's chief executive, tied with a black mourning ribbon. He was not harmed.
Delfi first reported the find on 30 August 2026, per Euromaidan Press; footage of the scene was already circulating on social media and Telegram channels by then, per MadeinVilnius.lt (via LNK Žinios).
RSI Europe does not publish its facility address for security reasons, and no source names the street. The map marker on this page is placed at Vilnius city centre as an approximate location, not the company's actual site.
The company's chief executive called it a familiar intimidation tactic
RSI Europe's chief executive told LNK Žinios by phone that the company was not alarmed: "This is ordinary intimidation, a provocation, the usual methods of Russians' work. Our reaction is absolutely normal - we continue to work, we do not react and do not get distracted, because their goal is to distract our attention and direct it where it should not go," he said, per MadeinVilnius.lt. He said it was the first time the company had faced a provocation staged this way, though RSI Europe had faced attempts to disrupt its operations before, including cyberattacks.
The wreaths follow a documented 2024 attempt to locate the company's facility
RSI Europe has been a target before the wreaths appeared. LRT reported that in 2024, Russian agents travelled through Latvia attempting to obtain the address of RSI Europe's manufacturing site - the company keeps its facility location undisclosed for security reasons and refuses to hold meetings there. Devices seized from the same group, later linked to related acts in Poland and Šiauliai, Lithuania, and arrested in 2025, showed RSI Europe listed among their targets. In June 2026, the company's chief executive told LRT Radio the firm had recently received fresh indications that its manufacturing operation was being targeted.
A near-identical wreath appeared outside a Czech defence company the same week
Around the same time, a similar wreath and a photograph of an executive at Czech defence group CSG, tied the same way, appeared outside CSG's offices. CSG manufactures ammunition and military equipment; RSI Europe supplies Ukraine with FPV drones and remote-detonation systems. Lithuanian and Czech police are investigating whether the two incidents are connected, per Euromaidan Press.
Police detained one suspect within hours
Lithuanian police detained a suspect and opened a pre-trial investigation. National Crisis Management Centre head Vilmantas Vitkauskas said the monitoring measures put in place after earlier talks between the state and defence-sector firms were what made the detention possible, per MadeinVilnius.lt. According to sources cited by LNK, the detained man is a Ukrainian citizen who may have been hired to deliver the wreaths, with a Belarusian citizen suspected of having ordered it online for €150 - preliminary information, not a confirmed charge, per LRT.
Lithuanian officials expect the tactic to recur
Remigijus Motuzas, chairman of the Lithuanian parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, said such cases "may become more frequent - and they have already become more frequent. This is probably only the beginning," per Euromaidan Press. He said security at national infrastructure sites has already been strengthened. Lithuanian officials attribute the social-media and Telegram spread of the wreath footage, paired with claims that NATO is fighting Russia through Ukraine and that European firms supplying Kyiv profit from the war, to the same information-operations playbook they associate with Russian intelligence services.
This follows Germany's official accusation against Russia over a different supply-chain target
The RSI Europe wreaths were reported in the same week Germany's government moved from investigation to formal attribution over a separate act against Ukraine's military supply chain: on 1 September 2026, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said evidence pointed to Russian state involvement in the explosive-laden drone found at Leipzig/Halle Airport on 4 August, and Berlin closed the Russian consulate in Bonn in response - detailed on AirVeto's Leipzig/Halle incident page. No government has attributed the RSI Europe wreaths to Russia by name; Lithuanian officials describe the tactic as consistent with Russian intelligence methods, not as a confirmed state action. The two events target the same category of firm - companies supplying Ukraine's war effort - through different means: one a bombing attempt against cargo infrastructure, the other psychological pressure aimed at an executive.
Wind over Vilnius on 30 August
At 06:00 UTC on 30 August, the anchor point AirVeto uses for this reconstruction, the 3,000 m layer over Vilnius showed W wind at 28.6 km/h; at 2,000 m the wind held W at 22.1 km/h. This is atmospheric context for the date, not a drift reconstruction: the wreaths were placed by hand at a fixed location, not carried by wind, so no object's path is being traced here.
This reconstruction is based on reporting by MadeinVilnius.lt (via LNK Žinios), Euromaidan Press, 15min.lt and Vakarų ekspresas, and on AirVeto's wind-model data for 30 August 2026. The full incident archive covers airspace and defence-industry events across the EU eastern border; AirVeto's sourcing approach is described on the methodology page.