Riga — The presidents of Latvia and Finland have welcomed NATO's new mission to secure airspace on its eastern flank, launched in response to Russia's violations of Polish airspace last week.
The military operation, known as Eastern Sentry, is an "appropriate and right response" to the alleged deliberate violations of Polish airspace, said Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs in Riga on Tuesday, after a meeting with his Finnish counterpart Alexander Stubb.
"We're very happy that the Eastern Sentry now begins in Polish airspace. We take lessons learned from there and then expand it all the way up to the high North," said Stubb.
The fact that Russia's escalation of its war in Ukraine also includes incursions into European airspace is "simply unacceptable and calls for a clear response," he said.
A large number of drones flew into Polish - and therefore NATO - airspace last week during a Russian airstrike on Ukraine. The Polish Air Force and other NATO allies shot down some of the drones for the first time.
Both presidents said they assumed that the drone incident was neither a coincidence nor a mistake, citing intent, incompetence or a combination of both as possible reasons.
"All three options are scary, frankly," Rinkēvičs said. Like Stubb, he did not want to speculate on whether the airspace violations were related to the Russian-Belarusian Zapad military manoeuvres in Belarus.
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