Russia issues chilling warning as NATO F-16 jet shoots down drone over Europe | World | News

Russia issued a chilling warning after a Romanian F-16 jet deployed with NATO air police forces in the Baltics shot down a drone over southern Estonia on Tuesday.

The drone that authorities said was shot down in southern Estonia on Tuesday is believed to be Ukrainian. Russia warned that it would retaliate if Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles were launched from the Baltic countries.

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said that given the drone’s trajectory, “we decided that we had to shoot it down.”
“We could probably say today that it was (a) drone, for example, that was supposed to hit some Russian targets,” he told The Associated Press.

This was the latest in a series of incidents in recent months in which Ukrainian drones targeting Russia passed over or landed in NATO territory; Western officials likely blamed Russia’s electronic jamming of the weapons.

These events come as Kiev has steadily increased its drone strikes, focusing on energy facilities and weapons factories deep within Russia as its domestic technology and production scale improves. Officials in Russia said on Sunday that Ukraine had killed at least four people and injured a dozen others, including three near Moscow, in one of the country’s largest drone strikes.

Long-range drone strikes are a hallmark of the war that began more than four years ago with Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine.

Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi said experts from Ukraine and Estonia were working on measures to prevent such incidents in the future.

Tykhyi said in the X post that Ukraine “apologizes to Estonia and all our Baltic friends for such undesirable events.”
Estonia’s defense minister said Ukraine was advised to be careful. “Our messages have not changed,” Pevkur said. “We have always told the Ukrainians: if you are attacking Russian positions or Russian targets, then these orbits need to be as far away from NATO territory as possible.”

The attacks caused some tensions within the Baltic states, which support Ukraine’s war effort, and between those countries and Russia. Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, known by its acronym SVR, said on Tuesday that Ukraine was preparing to launch drone strikes against Russia from the territory of the Baltic states and warned of retaliation.

Stating that Ukrainian military personnel were already deployed to Latvia, the organization warned that the country’s NATO membership would not protect it from “just revenge”.

“Modern surveillance systems allow the coordinates of the drone launch site to be determined precisely,” SVR said.

Last week the government collapsed in Latvia; After the defense minister had to deal with multiple incidents involving rogue drones suspected of coming from Ukraine, the prime minister resigned and his party withdrew its support.

“Russia lies that Latvia allows any country to use Latvian airspace and territory to launch an attack on Russia or any other country,” Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs said on X.

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said in a statement following Tuesday’s incident that Ukraine had the right to strike Russian military targets.

“Estonia did not allow its airspace to be used for attacks against Russia,” he said. “Incidents like this are linked to Russian jamming activities.”