COPENHAGEN, March 31 (Reuters) – Estonia and Latvia both detected foreign drone activity near their borders with Russia overnight, their militaries said, in the latest airspace incidents to unsettle NATO’s eastern flank.
Estonia’s defence forces said in a statement early on Tuesday they had detected “potentially dangerous air activity” inside and outside the Baltic country’s airspace overnight.
“A preventive threat notification was sent out,” and the threats had since passed, it added.
It was “highly likely that Ukrainian drones that went astray were involved,” spokesperson for the Estonian defence forces, Colonel Uku Arold, told Estonian public broadcaster ERR.
Authorities did not reply to a request for comment.
Ukraine has stepped up drone attacks on Russian oil refineries and export routes over recent weeks, some close to Russia’s border with the Baltic countries and Finland, in an attempt to weaken Moscow’s war economy.
Debris from at least one drone was found in Estonia’s Tartu county, with reports of further finds being investigated, according to ERR.
Latvia’s National Armed Forces said in a separate statement they had detected a foreign unmanned aerial vehicle near the Latvian-Russian border late on Monday. The aircraft did not enter Latvian airspace, it added.
A Ukrainian drone that crashed in Finland on Sunday carried an unexploded warhead, Finnish authorities said on Monday.
(Reporting by Andrius Sytas and Janis Laizans, writing by Stine Jacobsen, editing by Andrew Heavens)
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