{"id":10698,"date":"2026-08-14T08:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T08:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/10698\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T08:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T08:34:08","slug":"nato-jets-shoot-down-drone-flying-over-eastern-latvia-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/10698\/","title":{"rendered":"NATO jets shoot down drone flying over eastern Latvia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fighter jets shot down a drone<\/a> that entered Latvia<\/a>‘s eastern airspace, the country’s military said Friday.<\/p>\n

The interception came against a backdrop of heightened concern in Europe<\/a> over unauthorised drone activity, as the Russia-Ukraine war<\/a> grinds on in its fifth year.<\/p>\n

The threat had ended, the armed forces said in a post on X, adding that allied fighter jets successfully destroyed the unmanned aerial vehicle that entered the NATO<\/a> member state’s airspace.<\/p>\n

Baltic Sea<\/a> neighbour Finland<\/a> also imposed temporary aviation and maritime restrictions in the eastern Gulf of Finland on Friday, its defence forces said on X.<\/p>\n

It described the move as a precautionary measure aimed at ensuring the safety of bystanders and the operational capabilities of authorities to counter potential drones.<\/p>\n

Read moreFast and fearless: Baltic defence startups innovate to counter Russian threat<\/a><\/p>\n

Hours later, the governor of Russia<\/a>‘s northwest Leningrad region said air defences had shot down 54 Ukrainian drones.<\/p>\n

“A fire broke out at the Baltic Sea<\/a> port of Ust-Luga following the attack,” regional Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said on Telegram.<\/p>\n

Earlier in June, French fighter jets deployed to NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission shot down a drone in Latvia<\/a>, marking the first time the alliance’s rapid-reaction force has downed a stray drone over the country.<\/p>\n

German authorities last week found an explosives-laden drone at Leipzig airport<\/a>, while operations at Hanover airport were disrupted after a drone entered restricted airspace, officials told AFP on Tuesday<\/p>\n

Read moreDrone with explosive device found near Ukrainian cargo plane at German airport.<\/a><\/p>\n

Countries \u200cneighbouring Russia and Ukraine<\/a> issue air threat alerts and down drones<\/a> from \u200btime to time as Moscow and Kyiv continue to exchange attacks.<\/p>\n

Russia’s northern NATO neighbours are tightening security around dams, power plants and natural gas \u2060infrastructure in a sign of mounting concern that Moscow will stage \u2060a “false flag” attack \u200bon them using Ukrainian drones.<\/p>\n

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fighter jets shot down a drone that entered Latvia‘s eastern airspace, the country’s military said Friday. The interception…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[865,7,287],"class_list":["post-10698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-fighter-jets","tag-nato","tag-nato-allies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}