On Monday, French jets shot down a drone, likely Ukrainian, over Latvia, while in Moldova, authorities found the wreckage of another one. With the Ukraine war increasingly fought by unmanned vehicles, European leaders are becoming increasingly concerned about the danger of the conflict spilling over into their territories.
Last month, a Romanian fighter jet shot down an off-course Ukrainian drone over Estonia. The next day, another triggered an air-raid alert in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. And just over a week ago a Russian drone, probably malfunctioning due to Ukrainian air defences, hit a residential building in the Romanian border city of Galati.
These incidents are becoming more frequent as the tempo of long-range attacks increases, and both sides are launching strikes close to the other’s western borders. A Western official told The i Paper that when making their calculations, Kyiv and Moscow had now “baked in” the potential risk of cross-border incursions. Both currently consider the dangers acceptable.
Shorts
The incidents keep coming. On Friday, Ukraine self-destructed one of its own Sea Baby naval drones inside the Romanian port of Constanța, claiming it had gone out of control because of Russian electronic warfare.
