French fighter jet shoots down drone in Latvian airspace, army says

A French military plane based in “Lithuania shot down a drone which had penetrated the airspace of Latvia, a member country” of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a spokesperson for the Latvian army said on Monday.

The latter, without specifying who had sent the drone, declared that it had entered the country from Russia “following an electromagnetic war”.

“Allied fighter jets managed to shoot down a drone that was entering Latvian airspace!” the army said in a message published on the social network X.

This is the latest security incident in a series of such incidents along Eastern Europe’s border regions.

Earlier in the day, authorities warned people in the eastern regions of Latvia to take shelter due to the threat. â The alert ended when the drone was shot down, the army said.

The French fighter plane that shot down the drone is based at Siauliai airfield, Lithuania, as part of NATO’s Baltic Air Police mission, which has provided aerial surveillance of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia since they joined NATO in 2004.

Latvia’s defense minister said NATO planes were still monitoring the border, adding that no damage linked to the downed drone had been reported.

In recent months, Ukraine has intensified its long-range drone attacks against Russia, notably in the Baltic Sea region, where several Ukrainian military drones mistakenly entered the airspace of Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia. Estonia.

Another drone, whose origin has not yet been identified, was detected this Monday in Moldova, not far from the Ukrainian border and its debris was found in a field near the village of Lopatna, in the east of the country, according to the Moldovan Defense Ministry.

Moldova, like other countries in the region, has expressed its fear of the threat posed by the war led by Russia on the security of Ukraine’s neighboring states.

(Reporting by Janis Laizans and Andrius Sytas, edited by Anna Ringstrom, French version by Rihab Latrache, edited by Benoit Van Overstraeten)