RUGAJI, Latvia, Aug 14 (Reuters) – An Italian fighter jet, part of a NATO mission, shot down a drone of unknown origin that entered the airspace of NATO and EU member Latvia on Friday during Ukrainian \u200cattacks on Russian ports, the defence pact and Latvian authorities said.<\/p>\n
Latvian soldiers were searching for debris from the \u200cdrone around midday in a wooded area near the village of Rugaji \u2014 around 35 km (22 miles) from the Baltic nation’s border with Russia \u2014 which was \u200bidentified as a potential crash site.<\/p>\n
“We can’t give information about the origin of the drone as the area is not yet searched,” Latvian military spokesperson Iveta Berzina told public broadcaster LSM.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian military drones have strayed into the Baltic nations’ airspace several times this year.<\/p>\n
Before Friday’s incident, Ukraine had been attacking Russian ports overnight near St Petersburg, which is located close to Finland and the Baltic \u200ccountries. Local regional governor Alexander Drozdenko said \u2060on Telegram that Russian forces had shot down 15 Ukrainian drones during the strikes.<\/p>\n
Two Italian Eurofighter jets took off from Lithuania and two Turkish F-16s were scrambled from a base in Estonia \u2060in response to the detection of the drone over Latvian airspace, NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said.<\/p>\n
One of the Eurofighters identified and shot down the drone.<\/p>\n
“All aircraft were operating under NATO command. An investigation is ongoing and NATO is in close contact with the Latvian authorities,” \u200bHart said.<\/p>\n
“NATO \u200bis ready and able to react to any potential threats, 24\/7, \u200bto safeguard our territory and protect our people.”<\/p>\n
BALTIC \u200cNATIONS SEEING DRONE SPILLOVER FROM UKRAINE WAR<\/p>\n
Located on the edge of the Ukraine war, in which both sides have extensively deployed drones in cross-border attacks, the Baltic nations have seen a recent increase in incursions into their airspace.<\/p>\n
A Romanian F-16 shot down a Ukrainian drone in May in Estonia, and a French Rafale downed another in Latvia in June.<\/p>\n
“I have to say that all these incidents are related to Russian electromagnetic warfare activities, which contributes to these unmanned aerial vehicles entering Latvian airspace,” \u200cBerzina said.<\/p>\n
Finland, another EU and NATO member, temporarily restricted areas for aviation \u200band maritime traffic in the eastern Gulf of Finland on Friday morning, \u200bits defence forces said on X, as a precautionary \u200bmeasure.<\/p>\n
A Latvian military commander involved in the search for the downed drone told Reuters the location \u200cof the suspected crash site was complicating efforts to \u200bfind the wreckage.<\/p>\n
“This area is \u200bhighly forested with relatively sparse farmsteads, making the terrain challenging. Of course, forests, bogs, and varying types of vegetation mean that the search is far from easy,” he said.<\/p>\n
Russia’s NATO neighbours are tightening security around dams, power plants \u200band natural gas infrastructure in a sign \u200cof mounting concern that Moscow will stage a “false flag” attack on them using Ukrainian drones.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Janis \u200bLaizans in Rugaji, Lili Bayer in Brussels, Andrius Sytas in Vinius, Jekater\u012bna Golubkova in Tokyo; Writing by Andrius \u200bSytas; Editing by Tom Hogue, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Joe Bavier)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RUGAJI, Latvia, Aug 14 (Reuters) – An Italian fighter jet, part of a NATO mission, shot down a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[855,3001,703,6638,894,5310,7,6600,2468],"class_list":["post-10927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-airspace","tag-allison-hart","tag-finland","tag-latvian-authorities","tag-latvian-military","tag-military-drones","tag-nato","tag-nato-command","tag-nato-member"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10927","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=10927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}