Several stray Ukrainian drones have violated the airspace of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia since March. All three countries border Russia and its ally Belarus.
A Romanian F-16 fighter jet, which is part of the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO) Baltic Air Policing mission, shot down a drone in southern Estonia on Tuesday, which probably belonged to Ukraine. The AP agency reported on this with reference to local officials.
“Given the trajectory of the drone’s flight, we decided that we had to shoot it down,” Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said. “Today we can state with the greatest probability that it was a drone that was supposed to, say, hit some Russian targets,” he told AP.
Drones violate airspace
Since March, several stray Ukrainian drones have already flown into the airspace of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which border Russia and its ally Belarus.
Kiev says the drones were launched to hit military targets in Russia, but their trajectory was disrupted by Russian jammers.
Incidents and political consequences
Some of these drones have crashed and exploded, including two that crashed into an oil storage facility in Latvia on May 7 and caused a fire. The incident caused a political crisis, as a result of which the Minister of Defense Andris Spruds resigned, followed by Prime Minister Evika Siliňová.
On Tuesday, Pevkur called on Ukraine to be more careful. “Our position has not changed. We constantly repeat to the Ukrainians that if they attack Russian positions or targets, the trajectories of these attacks must be as far as possible from NATO territory,” the Estonian minister pointed out.
