Lithuania’s capital airport on Wednesday suspended flights due to a drone warning, the country’s national crisis management centre said.
The alert was issued in response to a drone in neighbouring Belarus that was seen flying towards Lithuania, the centre said, adding that the drone’s origin had not been confirmed.
A NATO fighter jet on Tuesday shot down a suspected Ukrainian drone over Estonia, the Baltic country said, the latest in a series of airspace violations in the region amid frequent Ukrainian attacks on neighbouring Russia.
Ukraine blamed Russia for steering one of its drones into the airspace where a NATO jet shot it down. Latvia issued a first air threat alert over a possible drone entering its airspace on Tuesday, telling residents near the Russian border to stay indoors, with NATO Baltic Air Police jets summoned to the area. It later said it found no evidence that a drone had entered its air space.
It declared a second air threat alert after that, over two counties bordering Russia, leading to a fresh deployment of NATO fighter jets.
“Russia continues to redirect Ukrainian drones into the Baltics with the use of its electronic warfare,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi said on X. “We apologise to Estonia and all of our Baltic friends for such unintended incidents.”
He also said Kyiv was not using Latvian or Estonian territory to launch drone attacks on Russia, which the Baltic countries echoed.
“Our legitimate military targets are located in Russia; and we use the Russian airspace to get to them,” he said.
Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations said on Tuesday Moscow had information that Ukraine planned to launch military drones from Latvia and other Baltic states, warning membership in NATO would not protect those countries from retaliation.
The ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, speaking during a UN Security Council meeting on security in Ukraine, said Kyiv had already dispatched Ukrainian drone forces to Latvia and Russian intelligence could determine the launch sites for such aircraft.
“The foreign intelligence of Russia did say that the coordinates of decision-making centers in Latvia are well known, and membership in NATO will not protect you from retaliation, even if you are a member of NATO,” Nebenzya said, speaking through an interpreter.
Latvia’s envoy to the Security Council, Sanita Pavluta-Deslandes, immediately rejected the remarks as “pure fiction.”
