On Tuesday 23 September, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte explained that the Allies would do everything necessary to defend themselves against Russian incursions into the territory of allied countries.
In the space of just a few days, Poland has suffered a drone incursion (see EUROPE 13707/16), a drone entered Romania (see EUROPE 13709/16), and three Russian MIG-31s entered Estonian airspace, only to be intercepted and escorted out of the airspace by Swedish, Finnish and Italian aircraft “without escalation, as no immediate threat was assessed”, according to Mr Rutte (see EUROPE 13713/3).
Highlighting “Russia’s increasingly irresponsible” behaviour, the North Atlantic Council (NAC) said Moscow bore “full responsibility for these actions, which are escalatory, risk miscalculation and endanger lives”. “They must stop”, warned the NAC at the end of the second meeting it has held within a fortnight, following on from the invocation of Article 4, first by Poland and then by Estonia.
The NAC warned that NATO would continue to respond firmly to Russia’s “reckless” actions. “Russia should be in no doubt: NATO and Allies will employ, in accordance with international law, all necessary military and non-military tools to defend ourselves and deter all threats from all directions”, he explained.
“We (...) always assess the threat levels and make sure that if there is immediate threat, of course, we will not hesitate to do what is necessary to protect our cities, our people, our infrastructure”, Mr Rutte stressed to the media. This means opening fire if necessary. “Decisions on whether to engage intruding aircraft, such as firing upon them, are, of course, taken in real time, are always based on available intelligence regarding the threat posed by the aircraft, including questions we have to answer like intent, armament and potential risk”, said Mr Rutte.
Drone attack on Denmark. Although Denmark was also the target of a drone flyover on Monday, which forced the closure of Copenhagen airport for several hours, Mr Rutte stressed that it was still too early to know whether Russia was involved: “the Danes are at this moment exactly assessing what happened (...) so it is too early to say”, he said, adding that he had spoken to the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen.
“We still need to wait for the final outcome (of the investigation), but what we have seen throughout the last weeks points out to Russia in terms of their reckless actions in at least three member states”, explained European External Action Service spokeswoman Anitta Hipper.
Work underway on the drone wall. European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier has announced that the European Commissioner for Defence and Space, Andrius Kubilius, will hold talks on Friday with representatives of seven countries “on the front line” – Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria – in addition to Denmark and Ukraine, about the drone wall: “discuss what is feasible, what is not feasible, what are the capabilities we already have, what are the needs that we need on top of it, where the Commission can jump in”.
He added that, although the Member States were in the driving seat, the Commission was concerned about the detection of incoming drones on the one hand and, on the other, about how to react to this in the event that such drones are detected.
This wall of drones was proposed by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in her State of the Union address (see EUROPE 13706/3). (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)