Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko and her Estonian counterpart Kristen Michal agreed on 2 June deepened bilateral cooperation on unmanned systems, a step taken into a months-long pattern of Ukrainian strike drones diverted by Russian electronic warfare into Baltic and Finnish airspace.
Svyrydenko, on her first visit to Tallinn as prime minister, also met President Alar Karis and Riigikogu Speaker Lauri Hussar, the Estonian government said. She described defense cooperation as the central theme of the talks, thanking Tallinn for its standing commitment to allocate 0.25% of Estonian GDP annually to military assistance for Kyiv.
Drone cooperation and the PURL track
Estonia and Ukraine signed a Letter of Intent on defense industry collaboration in April 2026, covering drone production, interceptor technologies, and electronic warfare. Svyrydenko welcomed Tallinn's participation in the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) program, under which allies finance US-made weapons for Kyiv. Estonia has allocated roughly €110.7 million in military aid to Ukraine for 2026, with a significant share directed at drone and counter-drone programs, Estonian officials have said.
The 2 June agreement to widen the unmanned-systems track follows a parallel deal Svyrydenko reached earlier in her Baltic tour, when Lithuania became the first NATO country to sign a defense-technologies and unmanned-systems agreement with Ukraine, covering joint production of interceptor and naval drones. Latvia and Ukraine reached a similar understanding in Riga on the same Baltic swing.
Months of stray drones over NATO territory
The Tallinn talks unfold against a year of cross-border drone friction. The first known incident in the current series was a Ukrainian drone that crashed in Lithuania's Varėna district on 23 March , likely diverted from a strike on Russia's Primorsk oil terminal by electronic-warfare jamming. Drones crashed in Latvia and Estonia two days later, and Finland confirmed a Ukrainian AN196 north of Kouvola on 29 March.
The pattern escalated through May. On 7 May, one of two strays entering Latvia from Russia exploded at the Rēzekne oil storage facility. On 19 May, a Romanian F-16 flying NATO's Baltic Air Policing mission shot down a stray Ukrainian strike drone over Lake Võrtsjärv in southern Estonia — the first NATO drone shootdown in Baltic airspace. Lithuania scrambled NATO jets and closed Vilnius airport on 20 May after a drone was tracked from Belarus.
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna has argued Moscow is deliberately steering Ukrainian drones into NATO airspace to erode Western support for Kyiv, a reading echoed by allied ministers at a 22 May meeting in Helsingborg. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi has apologized to Tallinn and pinned the redirects on Russian jamming. Estonia has begun building physical defenses: on 30 May, the Interior Ministry activated the first fixed drone-detection sensors along the land border with Russia near the Luhamaa checkpoint, opening a system meant to cover the country's full eastern frontier by year's end.
Energy, sanctions, deported children
Estonia's contribution to the Ukraine Energy Support Fund has exceeded €2.6 million, and Ukraine offered to share its experience in decentralizing the grid and operating it under sustained attack. The prime ministers discussed the European Union's 21st sanctions package against Russia, with a focus on countering the Kremlin's shadow tanker fleet.
Svyrydenko also raised the Bring Kids Back UA initiative for returning Ukrainian children unlawfully deported to Russia. She thanked Estonia for being the first country whose parliament ratified the agreement establishing a Special Tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine, and noted ongoing work on a complementary compensation mechanism. Estonian reconstruction projects in Zhytomyr Oblast and an upcoming Recovery Conference in Gdańsk also featured in the talks.
