That can send drones toward neighboring NATO territory — something Baltic and Ukrainian officials say is now happening.
For Kyiv, the balance is delicate. Ukrainian officials have apologized for incidents involving stray drones, while insisting that strikes on Russian military and economic targets are lawful acts of self-defense. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has shown no sign of halting the bombing campaign, which he calls “sanctions” aimed at bringing Russia to its knees.
Russia’s air defenses are becoming increasingly porous, prompting it to try to use political pressure to halt the Ukrainian attacks.
“Russia wants to discredit Ukraine in the eyes of countries that are one of the key ones in terms of direct and indirect support for Ukraine,” Mykola Bielieskov, a senior military analyst with the Come Back Alive Initiative and a research fellow at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, told POLITICO. The goal, he said, is to create “a point of contradiction and division” between Kyiv and the Baltic countries.
So far, that effect has not materialized. Baltic officials are not blaming Ukraine for deliberately endangering them, and Latvia has signaled it will not trigger NATO’s Article 4 consultation mechanism over the incursions.
Rather than fraying relations between Ukraine and its allies, it seems to be strengthening them.
In an X post addressed to his Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian counterparts, Wadephul said Germany stood in solidarity with its Baltic allies, adding: “A threat against one ally is a threat against the whole Alliance. We won’t be intimidated. We stand together.”