NATO Jets Shoot down Drone over Latvia

Early Friday morning, fighter jets deployed as part of NATO’s Baltic air policing mission shot down a drone that had entered Latvian airspace. The Latvian Armed Forces subsequently lifted air threat alerts in areas near the Russian border. They said the foreign drone had entered Latvia as a result of Russian electronic warfare, but did not immediately identify its origin.

Neighboring Finland also took precautionary measures, temporarily restricting air and maritime traffic in the eastern Gulf of Finland because of the potential threat posed by drones.

The incident comes amid heightened tensions on NATO’s northeastern flank. Russian authorities also said that air defenses had shot down 15 drones overnight in the Leningrad region, which borders Finland and Estonia and includes St Petersburg.

Russia’s northern NATO neighbors have recently tightened security around dams, power plants and natural gas infrastructure amid concerns about potential Russian sabotage and hybrid attacks.

Concerns have also grown over a possible false-flag operation in which Moscow could use Ukrainian-made drones to stage an attack. Lithuania has publicly warned of such a scenario, while regional intelligence assessments cited by Reuters indicate that Russian intelligence services have considered an operation targeting infrastructure in Russia, the Baltic states or Poland. The Kremlin has dismissed warnings of Russian clandestine attacks as “scare stories”.

(Reuters, mja)