A drone alert blasted on my phone – we had to take shelter. This is the new reality on Nato’s eastern flank | Linas Kojala

In Lithuania, and throughout the Baltic, we have lived for years with Russian hostility – but the tech now means that London, Berlin and Paris are just as vulnerable

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking through the streets of Vilnius, on my way to give a talk on geopolitics to a group of visiting Austrian business and academic leaders. It was a pleasant spring day: people were out and about, cafe tables were set outside – all the familiar tranquillity of a European capital that has grown used to talking about war in theory, but not to expecting it overhead.

Then an alarm blasted from my phone. Not a polite notification. Lithuania’s emergency alert system is designed to be impossible to ignore. The first message warned of a possible drone threat. The next was sharper: air danger – seek shelter.