Lithuanian Defence Ministry believes NATO must shoot down Russian drones in Baltic region

Laurynas Kasčiūnas, Minister of Defence of Lithuania, has called for a change in the algorithm of the NATO’s Air Policing mission in the Baltic countries after a Russian military drone recently fell in Latvia.

Source: European Pravda with reference to the statement by Kasčiūnas, cited by the LRT TV channel

Details: Kasčiūnas stated that "the air policing must not only patrol but also, if necessary, if possible, if time permits, shorten the decision-making chain at the NATO level so that they can take off immediately and destroy the drones".

Kasčiūnas believes that in the event of a threat of a drone violating the NATO airspace being detected, the information about it must be quickly transferred to the NATO headquarters.

"The NATO HQ assesses the situation to see if there is sufficient evidence that it is a hostile drone and not some other lost aircraft, and then a swift decision is made to deploy air police jets. This is a certain algorithm, and it needs to be accelerated," Kasčiūnas explained.

Asked about Vilnius’ reaction in the event of an aggressor’s drone violating Lithuanian airspace, the defence minister said it should be a collective NATO decision.

Background:

• On 9 September, the military command of Latvia officially confirmed that the drone, which had entered the Latvian airspace from Belarus and fell in its territory, turned out to be a Shahed equipped with explosives.
• The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia summoned a temporary Charge d’Affaires of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in connection with the incident.

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