VILNIUS, April 1 (Reuters) – Drones detected in Estonia appear to have strayed from Ukraine while headed for Russia, the Baltic country’s armed forces said late on Tuesday.
Estonia had earlier on Tuesday said it detected drones inside and outside its airspace overnight, with broadcaster ERR reporting that debris from at least one drone was found.
An army spokesperson late on Tuesday said several drones had entered Estonia and the assessment was they had been “launched from the Ukrainian side to strike military targets on the territory of the Russian Federation near Estonia’s borders”, but had strayed into Estonia.
Separately, Finnish police on Wednesday said a drone detected in Finland on Tuesday was not domestic. Broadcaster YLE reported, not identifying its sources, that it was of Ukrainian origin.
The violations came as Ukrainian drones again hit a Russian oil export terminal near St Petersburg.
The army spokesperson said the NATO Baltic air policing mission had responded to the drone threat, without saying if any drones had crashed on Estonian territory. “Such incidents are very likely to recur in the near future and are a direct consequence of Russia’s full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine”, they said.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha told a press conference on Tuesday that his country was working with the Baltic countries and Finland to prevent future incidents.
“We are immediately sharing all necessary information, and I can reassure you that we never aimed drones at these countries,” Sybiha said, adding that the incursions were the result of “conscious and deliberate actions by Russia”.
On Sunday, a stray Ukrainian drone crashed in Finland, the first time the Ukraine war spilled onto Finnish soil. Last week, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania reported drones of Ukrainian origin on their territory in connection with earlier attacks on the Russian oil terminal.
(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom in Stockholm, Andrius Sytas in Vilnius, Yuliia Dysa, Dan Peleschuk in Kyiv, editing by Louise Rasmussen)
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