Estonia's government has told Ukraine it expects better control of Ukrainian long-range drones after months of airspace breaches across the Baltic states and Finland, the public broadcaster ERR reports. Ukrainian officials have already raised the matter with Tallinn, and Estonia's defense and foreign ministers have set out their position publicly.
Since January, Ukrainian drones launched at Russian oil-exporting facilities on the Baltic coast have repeatedly ended up in Baltic and Finnish territory, in incidents that have most likely been caused by Russian jamming, according to ERR.
"The easiest way": control your own drones
On Friday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Kyiv is "considering" sending Ukrainian experts to the region after Latvia's border was breached and at least one drone struck a fuel storage depot. Such a deployment would, in his words, "help directly strengthen the airspace security of our friends against any types of incidents," he told ERR.
Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur (Reform) said Tallinn would seek clarification on what Sybiha's offer means in practice, but pointed Kyiv toward a simpler remedy.
"Naturally, all of this needs to be specified and clarified as to what exactly it means and what they themselves had in mind by it. We will start dealing with this very quickly now. Certainly, the easiest way for the Ukrainians to keep their drones away from our territory is to control their activities better," Pevkur said.
Tsahkna: fear of Russian takeover, not of escalation
Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna (Eesti 200) acknowledged Ukraine's right to defend itself and to strike Russian targets, but said the government is worried about more serious accidents. His concern, as he framed it, is less about NATO escalation than about hijacked Ukrainian hardware coming down on Estonian civilians.
"If they operate very close to NATO borders, then if Russia were to deploy a missile system or something similar that could end up in NATO territory, Russia actually fears NATO, and in such a case, Russia simply does not want to escalate the military conflict. At the same time, however, it is dangerous in another sense that Russia could take control of Ukrainian drones and send them toward us, somewhere where there could also be civilian casualties," Tsahkna said.
Ukraine, ERR notes, will not stop its attacks on Russian Baltic Sea ports — meaning incidents of this kind are very hard to avoid.
A call for Estonian initiative
Security expert Rainer Saks (Parempoolsed) argued Tallinn should not wait for Ukrainian proposals. "It is clear that there should be some element of mutual cooperation and consideration here. In my opinion, the Estonian state itself should deal with this proactively, rather than waiting for Ukraine to come forward with some kind of proposals of its own," Saks said.
Kill switches and altered trajectories
Pevkur and his Ukrainian counterpart last spoke a week ago, after a drone briefly entered Estonian airspace. According to ERR, the ministers reviewed measures previously discussed between the two sides — including built-in self-destruction systems on Ukrainian drones.
"It is possible to alter the trajectory, it is possible to control drone flights through so-called kill switches built into the drones, meaning automatic destruction systems — if it is seen that a drone is deviating from its course, then it is possible to destroy that drone remotely and automatically," Pevkur said.
A pattern of breaches
In March, several drones breached Estonian airspace. One hit a chimney at the Auvere Power Plant, two kilometers from the Russian border. A week later, a drone crashed in Tartu County. Debris has since washed up along Estonia's northern coast. The most recent breach came on the Latvian border, where a drone struck a fuel storage depot.
Russia, for its part, has said the Baltic states are allowing Ukraine to use their airspace to launch attacks — a claim the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have repeatedly denied. Ukraine accuses Russia of deliberately directing drones into Baltic airspace, ERR reports.
