NATO fighters shot down a drone over eastern Latvia on Friday, the country’s armed forces said, in an incident authorities linked to “Russian electromagnetic warfare.”
The drone was destroyed over the Balvi region by aircraft taking part in NATO’s Baltic Air patrol mission. Latvia said airspace alerts were issued across several eastern and southern regions and lifted at 4:50 a.m. local time.
Latvia said the downed drone was “a foreign unmanned aerial vehicle” that had “flown into Latvia as a result of Russian electromagnetic warfare,” according to the translated statement. The country’s armed forces didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for further details of the incident.
After the incident, Finland temporarily restricted airspace and a sea area in the eastern Gulf of Finland early Friday as a precaution. The Finnish Defence Forces said no drones entered the country and the restrictions were lifted shortly after 7 a.m. local time.
“This is a confirmation that Latvian airspace is protected,” Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs said on X.
“At the same time, such incidents remind us that we must continue to strengthen the surveillance and anti-drone capabilities of Latvia’s eastern border in order to be able to detect, identify and neutralize any potential threat as quickly as possible.”
Kulbergs took office in May after Latvia’s previous government collapsed amid a political dispute over its response to drone incursions.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has heightened anxiety in the Baltic states and Finland, which joined NATO in April 2023 after decades of military nonalignment, to boost its defenses against Russia, with which it shares a border.
Latvia, an EU and NATO member that also borders Russia, has faced repeated instances of drones entering its airspace as a result of the war in Ukraine.
Some have been Ukrainian drones knocked off course by Russian electronic warfare, such as the jamming of navigation signals, which can make their flight paths unpredictable and complicate decisions about whether and where to shoot them down.
NATO allies as late as June shot down another drone over Latvian territory, which its armed forces also said was “a result of Russian electromagnetic warfare.”
“As long as Russia’s aggression against Ukraine continues, similar incidents involving foreign unmanned aerial vehicles entering or approaching Latvian airspace may occur,” Latvia’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement on Friday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday that Russia would “further intensify our methods of destroying everything supplied by the West that fuels Kyiv’s war machine,” according to Russian news agency Interfax.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned earlier this week that Russian President Vladimir Putin was preparing to escalate the war, as he called on allies to ramp up sanctions pressure on Moscow and provide Kyiv with further air defense support.
Russian forces have stepped up missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, likely seeking to take advantage of Kyiv’s limited supply of ballistic missile interceptors.
But Ukraine has seen recent success in long-range missile targeting of Russia’s energy infrastructure and major logistics centers.
– CNBC’s Sam Meredith contributed to this report
