‘A restless and difficult night’ in the Baltics as NATO fighter jets fail to shoot down drone

NATO fighter jets twice tried and failed to shoot down a drone over northern Lithuania overnight, as unidentified aerial objects triggered air-raid warnings across the Baltic states and prompted precautionary restrictions in Finland.Three unmanned aircraft were initially detected operating in Belarusian airspace and moving north towards Latvia. Latvia’s armed forces subsequently reported that two additional aerial targets entered Latvian airspace from the direction of Belarus and later departed.A fourth drone crossed from Belarus into Lithuania at around 1.20am local time (12.20am CET). It briefly entered Polish airspace before abruptly changing direction and returning to Lithuania.NATO fighter jets tracked it as it travelled north towards the Latvian border, but two attempts to destroy it near Biržai, in northern Lithuania, were unsuccessful. One of the missiles fired by the fighter jets missed the drone and fell to the ground.The drone subsequently crossed into Latvia, where fighters on NATO’s air policing mission could not get into position to shoot it down, allowing it to cross into Estonia and eventually into Russia.The drone’s type, origin and whether it was carrying explosives remain unknown.“We do not currently have confirmed information about the type of drone,” Rear Admiral Giedrius Premeneckas, chief of the Lithuanian Armed Forces Defence Staff, said at a press briefing early on Wednesday.