Latvia and Lithuania on May 7 called for NATO to increase air defenses over the region after two suspected stray Ukrainian drones crossed over the border with Russia and crashed in Latvia, with one of the drones exploding at an oil storage facility.
Police and firefighters said that four empty oil tanks were damaged at a storage facility in Rezekne, Latvia, about 25 miles from the Russian border, and debris believed to be from a crashed drone was found at the site.
Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds told reporters that the drones were likely launched by Kyiv in an attack on Russia and accidentally strayed into the wrong side of the frontier, landing in the territory of the NATO member state.
"I have raised this with our allied partners, including within the NATO framework in this region, that the defense of our airspace is a shared responsibility," Spruds said at a press conference near the crash site in the eastern part of the country.
"This is shared [NATO] airspace, and it is necessary to have [military] units here," he said.
This would not be the first time that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from Ukraine have inadvertently ended up in the Balkans after being launched to strike targets against neighboring Russia.
In late March, several stray Ukrainian UAVs hit Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, with one hitting a chimney at a power station and another crashing into a frozen lake and exploding.
Increasing Airspace Security
The three Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are strong supporters of Ukraine in the war with Russia.However, they have not allowed their airspace and territories to be used for UAV attacks against Russia, the countries' defense ministers said last month.
Echoing the position of his Latvian neighbor, Lithuanian Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said he expects NATO to increase airspace security in the Balkan.
"Strengthening anti-drone defense in our region should be a particular emphasis [for NATO], and additional capabilities are welcome here," Kaunas said in Lithuania's capital, Vilnius.
Counter-Drone Technology
NATO's Innovation Range last month began testing counter-UAV technology.The defense union said in a March 18 statement that industries from NATO allies and Ukraine, as well as government representatives, gathered at the Selija Military Training Area between March 9 and March 13 for the first in a series of tests of UAV and counter-UAV activities planned throughout this year.
Earlier this month, NATO said that allies had tested layered counter-drone defenses at the Capu Midia Training Range in Romania.
Allies Step Up
The calls from Baltic member states for additional air defense support from NATO comes as the alliance's European partners agree to commit to take greater responsibility for the continent's security, as the United States reconsiders its relationship with the defense alliance and pivots toward other security priorities domestically and globally.“There needs to be a stronger European element in NATO. I have no doubt about that,” Starmer said during a panel discussion at the European Political Community summit in Yerevan, Armenia.
"We’ve been behind the curve for too long: over-dependencies, over-reliance, and assumptions about the world that we live in—they’ve gone,” he said.
“We now need to lead out of this, and we need to do it at pace because these impacts are real,” Starmer said.