A Romanian F-16 Nato jet shot down a drone over Estonia on Tuesday in what appears to be the latest case of Russian electronic jamming diverting long-range Ukrainian drones into the alliance’s territory.
A local resident told the Estonian public broadcaster, ERR, that he had seen two fighter jets – part of a Nato force policing the skies over the Baltic states – flying in the area before a loud bang that brought the drone down. He said the drone had crashed about 30 metres from the nearest residential building.
After analysing its trajectory, “we decided that we need to take it down,” Estonia’s defence minister, Hanno Pevkur, said.
The spokesperson for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, Heorhii Tykhyi, said: “We apologise to Estonia and all of our Baltic friends for such unintended incidents.
“We have been and remain in close cooperation between our specialised institutions to get to the heart of the matter in each case and seek ways to prevent them.”
He blamed Moscow for the incident, saying that Kyiv had been aiming at legitimate targets inRussia and that it had never attempted to use Baltic airspace for its drones.
It was the latest in a series of incidents in which Ukrainian drones have apparently been pushed off course by Russian electronic jamming. The Latvian government collapsed last week over a crisis that stemmed from its response to a similar incident in which two drones exploded at an oil storage facility.
Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service said on Tuesday that Ukraine planned to launch drone attacks against Russia from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and warned of “just retribution”.
Officials from the three Baltic countries deny plans for their airspace to be used for the launch or overflight of drones.
“Russia is lying about Latvia allowing any country to use Latvian airspace and territory to launch attacks against Russia or any other country,” the Latvian president, Edgars Rinkēvičs, wrote on X.
Estonia’s foreign minister, Margus Tsahkna, said the only reason Ukrainians drones were appearing over Estonian territory was as a result of Russian electronic warfare pushing them off course.
“Estonia has not permitted its airspace to be used for attacks against Russia. Incidents such as this are linked to Russian jamming activities,” he said.
In an interview with the Guardian in Tallinn over the weekend, Tsahkna struck a similar tone: “These are the consequences of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. This is a desperate move to divide the west and also put us on pressure that we should tell Ukrainians to stop it, because Ukraine is hitting their lifelines,” he said.
Estonia supported Ukraine’s right to attack targets in Russia, he said, adding that the two capitals were in constant contact and Tallinn had asked Kyiv to be more careful with its drone routes given the Russian jamming.
Pevkur reiterated after the shooting down on Tuesday that Ukraine had to be careful with its drones.
“We’ve said to the Ukrainians all the time that if you’re attacking Russian positions or Russian targets, then these trajectories have to be as far from the Nato territory as possible,” he told Associated Press.
Additional reporting by Jakub Krupa