Ukrainian military drone shot down over NATO country, prompting apologies

Ukrainian military hardware appears to have once again endangered the people of a NATO member nation.

Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal announced on Tuesday that “a drone entering Estonian airspace was detected quickly and shot down over Southern Estonia by a NATO Air Policing fighter jet.”

‘These trajectories have to be as far from the NATO territory as possible.’

Michal thanked Estonia’s “NATO allies, the Romanian Air Force, and the fighter pilots who carried out this mission with professionalism and precision,” adding that “NATO is vigilant, prepared, and capable of acting rapidly when needed.”

Hanno Pevkur, the defense minister for the Baltic nation of 1.36 million souls, confirmed that a Romanian Air Force F-16 pilot participating in a training flight shot down the drone using a single missile. The remains of the drone crashed several hundred meters away from a residential building in the Central Estonian town of Põltsamaa.

A resident told state media that he saw two fighter jets soar overhead, then heard a loud bang.

“There was a loud blast, and I saw the drone falling from the sky,” said the witness. “As it was already close to the ground, I heard another blast.”

It’s presently unclear whether the drone was carrying any warheads.

Heorhii Tykhyi, a spokesperson for Ukraine, apologized to Estonia “for such unintended incidents,” reported DW.

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Sergei SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

The Estonian Defense Forces claimed that the Ukrainian drone stole into Estonian airspace “under the conditions of heavy electronic warfare, including GPS spoofing and jamming, by Russia.”

Defense Minister Pevkur said in an interview with Estonian Public Broadcasting that Ukrainian officials — who do not have permission to use Estonian airspace — “have indeed apologized, but they have also reaffirmed that they are doing everything on their part to ensure that these drones do not enter NATO airspace.”

Pevkur expressed some frustration with Kyiv, telling the Associated Press, “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.”

The Estonian Internal Security Service has launched a criminal investigation into the aerial intrusion.

In recent months, numerous Ukrainian military drones have entered the airspace of friendly neighboring countries.

A pair of Ukrainian drones entered Estonian and Latvian airspace on March 25, for example. One of the drones struck Estonia’s Auvere power ⁠station and the other crash-landed. Officials suggested that the drones were supposed to be part of a Ukrainian attack on Russia.

Days later, two drones entered Finnish airspace, then crashed near the city of Kouvola. Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo told his country’s state media that the drones appeared to be of Ukrainian origin.

Earlier this month, two more Ukrainian drones strayed into NATO airspace, crashing ultimately on Latvian soil. Reuters reported that one of the drones exploded at an oil storage facility, damaging four tanks.

Drones aren’t the only unwanted surprises Ukraine had sent into NATO’s back yard.

A S-300 air defense missile landed in Poland on Nov. 15, 2022, rocking the village of Przewodów and killing two farm workers.

Ukrainian officials and numerous media outlets — including the Associated Press, CNN, CBS News, and Fox News — rushed to suggest that the explosion was the handiwork of the Russians, which would have been sufficient to trigger articles 4 and 5 of the NATO charter, potentially putting the U.S. into direct conflict with the nuclear power.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president whose term officially ended in May 2024, said in the wake of the deadly explosion, “Russian missiles hit Poland, the territory of our friendly country. People died.”

The Polish and American governments rejected the suggestion that Russia fired the missile, noting instead that it was likely a Ukrainian missile that had accidentally been lobbed into a NATO country.

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister at the time, called the claim that the explosion was caused by Ukraine a “conspiracy theory.”

Polish investigators, denied any relevant intelligence from Kyiv, later claimed that the missile was fired by Ukraine. The particular missile that landed in Przewodów has a maximum range of 56 miles, and Russian forces were nowhere near close enough to land the shot.

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