The war in Ukraine continues to put NATO under strain. NATO fighter planes shot down a drone over Lithuania, the president of this Atlantic Alliance member country, Gitanas Nauseda, announced on Tuesday September 15.
“A drone that violated Lithuanian airspace last night was quickly shot down by NATO fighters,” Gitanas Nauseda wrote on X, without specifying which country the drone belonged to. “As Russia escalates its aggression against Ukraine, such preparation is vital for our region. Together with our NATO allies, Lithuania will defend its airspace,” he added.
According to Lithuanian national radio LRT, which cites preliminary data from the National Crisis Management Center (NKVC), the drone came from neighboring Belarus and was heading west. It fell in a rural area near Lake Kaunas in the center of the country.
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“Our most sincere thanks to our allies, whose presence helps protect our skies and strengthen our security,” wrote Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys, also on X, according to whom “NATO remains vigilant, committed and ready.”
Poland launches “military air operations”
Furthermore, the general staff of the Polish army announced on the night of Monday to Tuesday that it had launched “air military operations” over the country due to strikes carried out by Russian drones against neighboring Ukraine.
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Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, former Soviet republics sharing a border with Russia, regularly record drone intrusions on their territories. On May 19, a NATO fighter shot down a Ukrainian drone over Estonia, the first interception of a foreign drone in the skies of a Baltic state by NATO air police since Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
According to Europeans, Russia is deliberately diverting Ukrainian drones intended to strike industrial installations and oil terminals in the St. Petersburg region, located on the Gulf of Finland, from their trajectory.
At the beginning of July, the Lithuanian president said he wanted his country to participate in Western nuclear deterrence against Moscow. The country has since moved to lift the constitutional ban on stockpiling atomic weapons on its soil.
“If nuclear weapons are deployed on (Lithuanian) territory and are aimed at us, then, as a consequence, the territory of this country will also be in the sights of our nuclear weapons,” retorted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov on September 11.
With AFP
