[codyb]

According to the Enforcer's (https://www.youtube.com/@EnforcerOfficial) stream yesterday

They just use prevailing wind routes, and toss tons of balloons up, and have 'em float over the border cause cigarette taxes are so high in Europe that it's worth it.

And then there's people waiting along the wind path to pick up the balloons as they come down.

There's a lot of inefficiencies built into smuggling operations. You can absolutely grab huge amounts of smuggled items in busts and not end up denting profits for the smugglers cause they're smuggling so much (see cocaine, fentanyl, cigarettes in blue states in America).

I wouldn't entirely rule out the Russians or Belarussions doing probing moves, but the Enforcer's been a great source of information for these events as they occur.

There's a fair number of articles from previous encounters - https://fortune.com/2025/10/05/hot-air-balloons-smuggling-ci...

It's entirely possible that the operations are in cahoots and this is an intelligence operation being conducted as a smuggling operation.