Latvia, Estonia say drones that strayed into their territory overnight were Ukrainian
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Two Ukrainian drones strayed into Latvia and Estonia respectively amid a mass overnight attack on targets inside Russia, the two countries said on March 25.
One drone was reported to have landed and exploded in a field in Lativia's Kraslava region, while another struck the chimney of the Auvere power station near the Russian border.
The incursions occurred amid one of Ukraine's largest mass deep strike drone attacks on Russia, with two key targets — a gas terminal in Ust-Luga and military icebreaker in Vyborg — struck, both on the Baltic Sea coast.
"Early warning systems tracked the drone's entry, and a sound resembling an explosion was recorded in the Kraslava district," the Lativian Defense Ministry said.
In the early morning, after debris at the site was analyzed, the drone was deemed by the ministry to be of Ukrainian origin.
As a result, Andris Spruds, the country's defense minister, cut short his planned visit to Ukraine and returned to Latvia.
Estonian authorities did not immediately report the origin of the drone that hit the Auvere power station, but later confirmed that it was also of Ukrainian origin.
"The drone was not directed at Estonia," commented the country's foreign ministry Margus Tsahkna. "This is a concrete consequence of Russia’s full-scale war of aggression."
According to Andrus Merilo, Commander-in-Chief of the country's defense forces, the unmanned aerial vehicle was almost certainly a strike or decoy drone with a minimal warhead, rather than a reconnaissance model.
No civilian casualties were recorded in either incident, and no serious damage was done to the power station or the Estonian electricity grid as a whole.
The news comes two days after another drone fell on a frozen lake in Lithuania, which Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene also identified as Ukrainian.
Both Ukraine and Russia use complex networks of jamming and navigation spoofing devices to defend against mass drone and missile attacks on their territory, leading to some of the drones sometimes flying off course.
Russian drones have on several occasions been found on Moldovan and Romanian territory after overshooting targets in Ukraine's Odesa Oblast.
