NATO Members Romania, Latvia Report Russian Drones Entered Their Airspace

Flags wave outside the Alliance headquarters ahead of a NATO defense ministers meeting, in Brussels on Oct. 21, 2021. Pascal Rossignol/Reuters

NATO alliance members Latvia and Romania reported that Russian military drones crossed into their airspace on Sept. 7, risking an escalation in the current Russia–Ukraine war.

The Latvian Defense Ministry reported one Russian drone crashed in the Rezekne region of eastern Latvia, near its border with Russia, on Sept. 7.

The Romanian Defense Ministry reported that fragments of another Russian drone fell near Periprava, situated near Ukraine’s southwestern Black Sea coastline, on Sept. 7.

The Romanian military stated that it suspects that Russian forces had deployed the drone as part of an attack on Ukrainian port facilities just across the border.

While the drone fragments that fell in Romania may have been part of a Russian attack on southwest Ukraine, it is unclear why a drone may have crashed in Latvia.

Although Latvia borders Russia, it is separated from Ukraine by Belarus.

In a Sept. 9 statement, the Latvian military identified the drone that crashed in the Rezekne region as a “Shahed,” referring to a family of various types of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) produced by Iran.

The Iranian government has supplied Russian forces with drones since 2022.

The various Shahed drone types include aircraft designed for aerial reconnaissance, as well as ones that can carry and launch munitions.

Other types of Shahed drones are also employed as “loitering munitions” or “one-way drones” that are designed to crash into targets and detonate an onboard explosive.

Rescuers work at a site of a building damaged during a Russian suicide drone strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, on May 28, 2023. Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters

The Epoch Times reached out to the Latvian Defense Ministry about the type of drone that crashed in Rezekne but the ministry declined to offer more specific details.

Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds urged greater NATO cooperation to support Latvia’s air defenses.

“We need to strengthen the defense of NATO’s airspace and promote the presence of allies in Latvia through the active implementation of the NATO air defense rotation model,” Spruds said, in a translated statement on Sept. 9.

The Epoch Times reached out to the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Russian Foreign Ministry for comment on the drone incidents but neither office responded by publication time.

The pair of incidents risks escalating the current conflict in Ukraine into a broader confrontation between NATO and Russia.

Article 5 of the founding NATO treaty stipulates that its members will regard an attack on one member of the alliance as an attack on the alliance as a whole and will respond as they see fit.

NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana, in a Sept. 8 statement, denounced the incident in Romania as “irresponsible and potentially dangerous” but said there was no indication of a deliberate attack on alliance member-states.

He did not comment on the crash in Latvia.

The Sept. 7 incidents are not the first time the war in Ukraine has spilled over into a NATO member nation’s territory.

Two citizens of Poland—a NATO member nation—were killed when an errant munition landed in the southeastern Polish village of Przewodow, a short distance from the Polish–Ukrainian border.

Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs initially attributed the deaths to a Russian missile, but Polish President Andrzej Duda subsequently concluded the blast was the result of a misfired Ukrainian air defense missile and assessed that there were no signs to suggest the deadly blast was part of an intentional attack on his country.

A police officer walks past a checkpoint on Nov. 16, 2022, in Przewodow, Poland, following reports a stray missile hit Polish territory, killing two people. Omar Marques/Getty Images

Poland scrambled fighter jets in March as Russian forces conducted extensive strikes throughout western Ukraine.

Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics, in a Sept. 8 statement, raised the alarm about the increasing number of air defense incidents along NATO’s eastern flank and urged the alliance to work to address the issue.

Reuters contributed to this article.