Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte clashed over the defence alliance’s response to Russia’s recent airspace violations, ERR reports, citing Fox News. After Russian fighter jets made a brazen incursion into Estonian airspace on 19 September 2025, Estonia requested consultations under Article 4 of the NATO treaty. Given that NATO had held Article 4 consultations after Russian drone incursions into Poland on 10 September 2025, Rutte argued that invoking Article 4 too often would dilute the alliance’s strength. According to Eesti Ekspress, Estonian officials insisted that Estonia’s airspace was not any less important than Poland’s. Article 4 has only been used nine times in NATO’s history. Since 2014, Russian aircraft have violated Estonia’s airspace more than 40 times.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant General Andrus Merilo, commander of the Estonian Defence Forces (EDF), said that shooting down the Russian fighter jets that violated Estonian airspace would have been a “strategic mistake” that many of Estonia’s allies “probably would not have understood,” ERR reported. He pointed out that the incident did not pose an immediate threat to human life. However, Merilo dismissed the idea that the incursion was a test, saying that it was “an escalatory step, aimed at creating broader reverberations” within NATO. The commander assured that EDF was prepared to use lethal force to protect the Estonian people, adding that “we have left difficult times behind” and entered a new, “dangerous era.”