Middle Europe faces stray Ukrainian drones as Kyiv targets Russian oil exports 

People take shelter in an underground car park during an air raid alert in Vilnius, Lithuania, Wednesday [AP Photo]

Over the past months, Ukrainian drones have crashed into the chimney of a power plant in Estonia, hit empty fuel tanks in Latvia and been shot down by Romanian fighter jets stationed in Lithuania.

For the first time in a NATO and European Union capital, Lithuanians were pictured sheltering in underground car parks in Vilnius on Wednesday, as authorities warned of unidentified drone activity.

No one has died or been injured recently, but the increasing airspace incursions have prompted some Baltic ministers to chastise Ukraine for the violations. In Latvia, officials’ handling of the stray drones led to a political crisis that triggered the collapse of the government earlier this month.

Ukraine has ramped up attacks on Baltic Sea ports used for Russian energy exports in an attempt to hit Moscow’s war chest as U.S. President Donald Trump’s war in Iran has driven up the price of oil, a key revenue stream for the Kremlin.

As Ukraine’s drones have snaked up north, they have skirted the borders of NATO members Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland. Some of them were not detected before they crash landed in some of the Baltic states.

Ukrainian officials apologized and said the drones were aimed at military targets inside Russia but were sent off course by Russian electronic interference.

The string of airspace violations has prompted questions about the state of air defenses on NATO’s eastern flank.

Ukraine is targeting Russian ports on the Baltic Sea

Ukraine’s intensifying attacks against Russia has focused on arms factories, ports on the Baltic Sea and energy facilities as the war in Iran has boosted oil prices.

It has particularly targeted the ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk, close to the borders of Estonia and Finland. Russia uses the ports to load up ships taking its oil exports through the Baltic Sea.

During one attack in May, which set part of the port of Primorsk on fire, more than 60 Ukrainian drones were shot down, Leningrad region governor Alexander Drozdenko said.

After stray Ukrainian drones entered Latvian airspace on May 7, the country’s Defense Minister Andris Spruds resigned, leading Prime Minister Evika Silina to also quit days later because she was left without a majority in the coalition government.

On May 19, a Romanian fighter jet based in Lithuania shot down a Ukrainian drone over southern Estonia. Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said it was likely aimed at targets in Russia and that he told Ukraine to send its drones “as far from NATO territory as possible.”

On Wednesday, NATO fighter jets escorted an unidentified drone which crossed into Lithuania, prompting a red alert urging citizens to take cover around the capital Vilnius, Lithuania›s defense ministry said. Contact with the drone was lost and the military was searching for it, the ministry said.

Russian electronic interference sends drones off course

Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Nordic and Baltic nations have increasingly warned about electronic interference from Russia disrupting communications with planes, ships and drones.

In the Baltic region, Russia often uses jamming and spoofing to send drones off course.

Satellite communications systems — known collectively as the Global Navigation Satellite System, or GNSS — receive precise time signals from satellites around 20,000 kilometers away in space. A smartphone, car, marine or aircraft navigation system compares how long it takes to receive signals from several different satellites to calculate an exact location.

Jamming occurs when a receiver is overwhelmed by a strong radio signal transmitted in the same frequency range as GNSS and other satellite navigation signals, leaving the receiver unable to fix its location or time. Spoofing involves transmitting fake signals that imitate a real GNSS satellite signal, commonly known as GPS, to mislead a phone, ship, or aircraft into thinking it is in a different place.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys said Tuesday that Russia is “deliberately” redirecting Ukrainian drones into Baltic airspace with electronic interference.

Drones have been entering Baltic airspace for many months

In September 2025, about 20 Russian drones flew into Poland, putting the spotlight on holes in NATO’s air defenses, as multimillion-dollar jets were scrambled. Those drones were not detected in advance, Estonia’s defense minister said at the time.

Neither was a Ukrainian military drone which crashed with explosives in Lithuania last week, Vilmantas Vitkauskas, chief of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre said on Sunday.

While Poland and Romania responded to the drone incursions last year by deploying new anti-drone technology — the first used by the NATO alliance aimed specifically at countering drones — that system is not in place across the entire Baltic region.

Defending against drones requires solving a complex set of technological, financial and bureaucratic problems and “there is no one solution against every type of drone,” Colonel Janno Märk of the Estonian Defense Forces said.

Tackling various types of drones operating at different speeds and altitudes require a layered air defense response, Märk said during military exercises in southeastern Estonia.

Budrys, the Lithuanian foreign minister, told AP in an interview Saturday that the Baltic countries are likely going to have to continue to counter incursions from Ukrainian drones as Kyiv now has the capability to reach targets “deep in Russia” as well as ports on the Baltic Sea. The way to counter those drones, he said, is actually with Ukraine’s help as the most effective anti-drone systems have been developed in the country. EMMA BURROWS, MDT/AP