Recent drone incidents in the Baltic States are part of Russia’s strategy to destabilise democratic societies in the region, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated, BNS reports. Speaking after a meeting with Baltic presidents in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, von der Leyen stressed the need for EU unity in support of the three Baltic States. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda insisted that the EU needed to take concrete action rather than issue messages of solidarity, BNS reported. Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics also noted that security challenges in the EU’s eastern border regions required broader EU support, LETA reported. In response, von der Leyen announced that the EU would provide an additional EUR 12bn through the SAFE programme for the Baltic States to invest in anti-drone capabilities, advanced air defence, and critical infrastructure protection.
Meanwhile, security experts told The Daily Telegraph that Russia was using a high-powered transmitter in the Kaliningrad region to direct Ukrainian drones towards the Baltic States and Finland. However, Finnish President Alexander Stubb dismissed the report, saying that he had more confidence in intelligence from the Finnish Defence Forces, MTV reported. He did not regard it as credible that Russia was deliberately directing drones towards Finnish airspace, given that Russia was very busy defending against an increasing volume of Ukrainian drone strikes. Earlier, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna also asserted in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat that Russia was directing Ukrainian drones to NATO airspace. According to Ivo Müürsepp, senior lecturer at Estonia’s Tallinn University of Technology, Russia has a large network of GPS jammers right across the border, ERR reported.
Russia can falsify GPS signals at a radius of up to 450 km from Kaliningrad, Darius Kuliesius, deputy director of Lithuania’s Communications Regulatory Authority (RRT), told Reuters. He said that Russia had greatly increased the number of its GPS jamming and spoofing facilities in the region. Russia’s electronic interference had become a “systemic, permanent, and unending provocation against European security,” Kuliesius stated. Moreover, Remigijus Bridikis, director of Lithuania’s State Security Department (VSD), said that Russia was using the drone incidents as cover for information operations against the Baltic States, BNS reported. He warned that Russia could be planning to combine the information operations with potential provocations related to the security of the Kaliningrad region.