Hot air balloon transporting Belarusian cigarettes found in Volyn region

The Western Regional Directorate of the State Border Guard Service reported this on its Facebook page, according to Ukrinform.

“Yesterday, servicemen of one of the border units of the Volyn Border Guard Detachment in Shatsk found a package containing tobacco products that the perpetrators had likely planned to transport to EU countries using a hot air balloon,” the statement said.

The package was discovered near the Ukrainian-Belarusian border.

The package was wrapped in a black polyethylene package, attached to a rope with remnants of the hot air balloon. Inside were 1,500 packs of Minsk cigarettes with excise stamps of the Republic of Belarus, as well as two GPS devices: one with a SIM card from a Belarusian mobile operator, and the other with a SIM card from a Polish operator. Border guards believe the balloon was intended to deliver the contraband from Belarus to Poland.

Law enforcement seized the contraband cigarettes and the technical devices. The estimated value of the seized cigarettes is about UAH 90,000.

As Ukrinform previously reported, at the Diakivtsi checkpoint on the Ukrainian-Romanian border, border guards of the Chernivtsi Detachment found and confiscated hidden battery packs in a minibus worth more than UAH 3 million.