Romanian jet downs drone in Estonian airspace

11:03, May 19. NATO scrambles fighters from Šiauliai in Lithuania. A drone has crossed into Estonian airspace from Russia. At 12:14, a Romanian F-16 pilot fires. The UAV drops into farmland near Põltsamaa, 30 metres from the nearest house. It is the first time a NATO fighter has destroyed a drone in Baltic airspace since the full-scale war began (Romania Insider, Estonian Defence Forces).

Two days later, the presidents of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania demanded NATO make this response permanent: upgrade Baltic Air Policing (a peacetime watching mission) to a full air defence mandate with rules authorising shoot-downs, backed by dedicated counter-drone systems on their soil (ERR). The change requires unanimous consent from all 32 NATO members. It arrives as Washington signals further troop withdrawals from Europe.

How Russia turns Ukrainian drones into a NATO problem

The drones are mostly Ukrainian. Ukraine's long-range strike UAVs target Russian oil infrastructure near the Baltic borders, principally the Ust-Luga and Primorsk terminal complexes in Russia's Leningrad region. Russian electronic warfare units jam GPS signals or inject false coordinates, steering the drones off-course into NATO territory. Ukraine has acknowledged and apologised for this. Estonia's defence minister confirmed the F-16's target was "most likely a Ukrainian drone that had veered off course" under heavy electronic interference.

The operation relies as much on information warfare as on the physical drones. On May 18, Russia's SVR intelligence service claimed Ukrainian drone operators were stationed at Latvian military bases and threatened strikes on Latvian "decision-making centres." Latvia, Ukraine, and the US rejected the claims (ISW). Belarus filed a diplomatic protest claiming a drone entered its airspace from Lithuania, days after its own military warned Lithuania via hotline about a drone heading the opposite direction. Lithuania called the protest "direct proof of Belarusian complicity in Russia's information attack".

The sequence feeds itself. Russian electronic warfare pushes Ukrainian drones into NATO airspace. Russian intelligence then uses the incidents as evidence the Baltic states are attacking Russia. The drone campaign ran parallel to an unannounced Russian nuclear exercise on May 19 that included missile launches from Belarusian territory (Defense News). Drones, disinformation, and nuclear signalling hit NATO's eastern flank in a single week.

Three countries, three system failures

Latvia's coalition collapsed on May 14 after the botched response to a drone striking an oil depot in Rēzekne (LSM). It was the first NATO-member government to fall as a direct consequence of drone-related hybrid warfare. PM Andris Kulbergs formed a replacement coalition six days later, untested. A detail sharpens the picture: Ukraine had offered the Baltic states a drone radar and detection programme. Estonia accepted. Latvia turned it down. The drone that hit Rēzekne arrived undetected.

Lithuania's civil defence broke down three times in five days. The emergency app LT72 crashed under user load on May 20, displayed outdated data on May 21, and failed again on May 22. Shelters in Vilnius were locked. Sirens never sounded. The president and prime minister were moved to bunkers.

Estonia's radar detected the May 19 drone before it entered the country. But Estonia owns no fighter jets. Without the Romanian pilot who happened to be airborne on a training sortie, the drone would have continued unimpeded.

What Ankara decides

Rewriting the Baltic mission from policing to defence requires a formal decision by the North Atlantic Council (NATO's permanent governing body, where any single ally can veto). The next plausible moment is the Ankara Summit on July 7-8.

NATO's supreme commander, General Grynkewich, confirmed on May 19 that Europe "should absolutely expect additional redeployments" of US troops. The layered detection and command architecture the Baltics need runs on American systems. European alternatives are under construction: Poland is building 18 counter-drone batteries; Latvia hosts NATO's first C-UAS innovation range. None of it covers Baltic skies today.

The European Parliament expressed "full solidarity" on May 21. Solidarity is not a radar network. The Ankara summit will test whether 32 allies are willing to fund the hardware to back it, while the country that underwrites NATO's air defence architecture steps away from the table.