NATO jets shoot down drone near Russian border
NATO fighter jets have shot down an unidentified drone in southern Lithuania, a Baltic country that borders the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Region, officials said on Tuesday.
The UAV entered Lithuanian airspace shortly after midnight and was downed around 30 minutes later over a rural area near the village of Pratkunai, west of the capital, Vilnius, according to Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Center.
“Teams have been dispatched to identify what kind of drone it is, determine its specifications, and establish what its intended target was,” Vitkauskas told Radio LRT. According to LRT, it was the first drone to be shot down over Lithuania.
The incident took place amid heightened tensions between Russia and NATO over the Ukraine conflict. Several Ukrainian drones veered into the Baltic states earlier this year, which Kiev has blamed on Russian signal-jamming.
NATO members have also accused Russia of flying drones into their airspace, allegations Moscow has dismissed as unfounded.
In a statement on X, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda thanked NATO for its “swift response.” Without directly blaming Moscow, he added: “With Russia intensifying its aggression against Ukraine, such readiness is vital for our region.”
Stray Ukrainian drones veered into Latvia and Estonia during Kiev’s deep-strike campaign against Russia, including an incident in March when one struck the chimney of a power plant in Auvere, Estonia. In April, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it had warned the Baltic states against allowing Ukraine to use their airspace for attacks.
Russia’s Kaliningrad Region is an exclave on the Baltic coast located between Lithuania and Poland that some NATO officials have described as a dangerous military outpost. In May, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys said in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung that NATO should be prepared to “raze military bases” there. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov slammed his remarks as “borderline insanity.”
